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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A Missouri woman who prosecutors say used a fake MySpace persona to "torment, harass, humiliate and embarrass" a 13-year-old girl who committed suicide was indicted on Thursday on federal charges. Lori Drew, accused of participating in a hoax on 13-year-old Megan Meier that led her to believe she was chatting with a 16-year-old boy, was indicted on conspiracy charges by a U.S. District Court jury in Los Angeles. Meier had what she thought was an online friendship with the fictional boy, "Josh Evans."

Why the same things that attract millions of happy visitors to New York—the glamour, the skyline, the anonymity—also draw people from around the world to kill themselves here. Stephen was no stranger to New York. He’d been to the city as a boy, and regularly came here for work now that he was in his twenties. A consultant, he’d take the train from his hometown several hours south of the city, stay from Monday to Friday, then return on the weekends. He loved New York, his mother, Judith, says. The energy, the people, figuring out the streets and subways. He...

As American strikes on Shiite fighters in Baghdad have widened, Iran has suspended talks with the United States on Iraqi security, with the Iranian Foreign Ministry on Monday citing the continued offensive as the reason. The American forces have been responding to fire from Shiite militias in the Amel neighborhood in western Baghdad. In eastern Baghdad they hammered the nearby district of New Baghdad during the day and the Shiite section of Sadr City on Monday night. “The focus of discussions with the U.S. is Iraq’s security and stability,” said Mohammad Ali Hosseini, the spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry...

TAMPA, Fla. -- Deborah Jean Palfrey, the woman known as the "D.C. Madam," apologized to her mother and sister in suicide notes, saying she couldn't bear going to prison and saw killing herself as the only "exit strategy." Palfrey, convicted last month of running an elite Washington prostitution ring, wrote to her mother that she could not "live the next 6-8 years behind bars for what you and I have come to regard as this 'modern day lynching,' only to come out of prison in my late '50s a broken, penniless and very much alone woman." The notes were released...

I just heard a report of a suicide at Disneyland tonight. the radio reporter(AM 640 KFI Los Angeles) stated that a man staying at a Disneyland hotel with a co-worker. The man climbed out on to the balcony turned and made a statement to his room mate and jumped to his death. Police would not say what his statement was they said that they were quite sure that it was suicide. Has anyone heard anything else? It was on the 1 am news, but mysteriously absent from the 1:30 news on AM 640 in Los Angeles Ca,

Tarpon Springs, FLA - A woman police believe to be convicted Washington escort service operator Deborah Jeane Palfrey committed suicide, officials said Thursday. A body police believe to be that of Deborah Jeane Palfrey was found in a shed near her mother's home Thursday morning in Tarpon Springs, about 20 miles northwest of Tampa. There was a suicide note, but police did not disclose its contents or how she killed herself. Police said they were trying to confirm the woman's identity, and declined to release more details until a news conference Thursday afternoon. That didn't stop people from reacting to...

WASHINGTON — Police in Tarpon Springs, Fla., said there was "no question" that Deborah Jeane Palfrey committed suicide by hanging Thursday, but that was not enough to stop immediate speculation that the infamous "D.C. Madam" was the victim of murder. Hustler magazine publisher and free-speech advocate Larry Flynt -- one of Palfrey's staunchest advocates -- was the strongest voice forwarding the notion that Palfrey's death was not by her own hands. "I think the media should be very cautious in treating this as a suicide," Flynt told FOXNews.com in a telephone interview from his Beverly Hills office. Asked if he...

--snip-- San Francisco homicide detectives investigating the case last June were in the midst of their busiest year in more than a decade. The theory they came up with to explain the death struck de la Plaza's family and friends as unlikely, even absurd: that he had done drugs, stabbed himself, then washed or disposed of the knife before dying. --snip--

<p>TARPON SPRINGS - Police were called to the home of DC Madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey's mother on Thursday to investigate her apparent suicide.</p> <p>Police have confirmed that the dead person is Palfrey who was 52.</p> <p>Palfrey was dubbed "The DC Madam" by the national media after her arrest for allegedly running an upscale call girl ring in the nation's capitol.</p>

Deborah Jeane Palfrey, 52, is believed to have killed herself Thursday morning in a trailer owned by her mother in Tarpon Springs, Fla.

Japan has a population groaning under the threat of suicide. Not only are people committing suicide, but the new Internet fad of mixing detergent and bath lotion is threatening to kill or sicken people around them. Heads up on a new fad of the Internet, a new method of suicide. On Thurday, at least 350 people were evacuated in Northern Japan because of a suicide using the newest method of detergent and bath lotion. The fumes had escaped and was feared to harm neighbors.

Does the Earth's magnetic field cause suicides? 13:39 24 April 2008 NewScientist.com news service Catherine Brahic Many animals can sense the Earth's magnetic field, so why not people, asks Oleg Shumilov of the Institute of North Industrial Ecology Problems in Russia. Shumilov looked at activity in the Earth's geomagnetic field from 1948 to 1997 and found that it grouped into three seasonal peaks every year: one from March to May, another in July and the last in October. Surprisingly, he also found that the geomagnetism peaks matched up with peaks in the number of suicides in the northern Russian city...

(04-21) 17:30 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- More than 120 veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq commit suicide every week while the government stalls in granting returning troops the mental health treatment and benefits to which they are entitled, veterans advocates told a federal judge Monday in San Francisco. The rights of hundreds of thousands of veterans are being violated by the Department of Veterans Affairs, "an agency that is in denial," and by a government health care system and appeals process for patients that is "broken down," Gordon Erspamer, lawyer for two advocacy groups, said in an opening...

Women are increasingly rejecting a desperate, Bridget Jones-like search for a perfect partner, preferring instead to enjoy their single status and refusing to compromise by settling for 'Mr Mediocre'. Caroline Davies reports Sunday April 13, 2008 The Observer They are successful, spirited and single and their growing numbers are contributing to a major change in the make-up of the traditional British household. 'Freemales' - manless women who are happy to remain so for the present at least - are now a force to be reckoned with and are overturning the dated Bridget Jones image of the lonely woman staring despondently...

Berkeley man died early today when he drove his car at speeds topping 80 mph into several parked vehicles in North Berkeley, moments after being thwarted in a possible attempt to kill himself by inhaling carbon monoxide, police said. The man, whose name was not immediately released, was pronounced dead at the scene of the crash, which happened at Yolo and The Alameda shortly before 2 a.m., police Sgt. Mary Kusmiss said. The incident began at 1:50 a.m. when a homeless man flagged down police Sgt. Patty Delaluna near Bancroft Way and Fulton Street in downtown Berkeley, Kusmiss said. The...

DALLAS (AP) - The fourth suicide this year among mentally ill patients treated at the Dallas VA Medical Center has led the hospital to close its psychiatric ward to new patients, and investigators from the national Veterans Affairs office are expected to arrive next week to assess safety. Joseph Dalpiaz, director of the VA North Texas Health Care System, ordered the shutdown after a man hanged himself April 4. The hospital stopped admitting patients to its 51-bed psychiatric unit the next day; 10 previously admitted veterans are still being treated there. Dalpiaz "decided he wanted to ... give us some...

By JEANNINE AVERSA, AP Economics Writer Fri Apr 11, 7:50 AM ET WASHINGTON - Americans' confidence in the economy fell to a new low, dragged down by worries about mounting job losses, record-high home foreclosures and zooming energy prices. According to the RBC Cash Index, confidence dropped to a mark of 29.5 in April, down from 33.1 in March. The new reading was the worst since the index began in 2002. It marked the fourth month in a row where confidence has fallen to an all-time low. "Consumers are very pessimistic," said Mark Vitner, economist at Wachovia. "There are not...

U.S. import prices rose by a more-than-expected 2.8 percent in March as petroleum prices jumped 9.1 percent, a Labor Department report showed Friday. U.S. export prices rose 1.5 percent during the month, also more than expected and the largest monthly gain on record, as prices for farm and food products continued to rise. Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast a 2 percent rise in import prices in March after a 0.2 percent gain in February. They also forecast a 0.5 percent rise in export prices after a previously reported 0.9 percent gain in February, which the Labor Department revised to...

HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. (April 6) - A man who received a heart transplant 12 years ago and later married the donor's widow died the same way the donor did, authorities said: of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. No foul play was suspected in 69-year-old Sonny Graham's death at his Vidalia, Ga., home, investigators said. He was found Tuesday in a utility building in his backyard with a single shotgun wound to the throat, said Greg Harvey, a special agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Graham, who was director of the Heritage golf tournament at Sea Pines from 1979 to...

China alleges Tibetan 'suicide squads' By AUDRA ANG, Associated Press Writer Tue Apr 1, 2:36 PM ET China has branded the Dalai Lama a "wolf in monk's robes" and his followers the "scum of Buddhism." It stepped up the rhetoric Tuesday, accusing the Nobel Peace laureate and his supporters of planning suicide attacks. The Tibetan government-in-exile swiftly denied the charge, and the Bush administration rushed to the Tibetan Buddhist leader's defense, calling him "a man of peace." "There is absolutely no indication that he wants to do anything other than have a dialogue with China on how to discuss the...

Prayers couldn't save man from himself Tuesday, April 1, 2008 9:55 PM By Randy Ludlow THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH Ultimately, the prayers of others could not save Marc Kidby from himself. On Feb. 8, Ohio University's Baker Center was evacuated as he threatened to jump from a fifth-floor ledge inside the student union. A group of students prayed for his safety, writing inspirational notes that a campus police lieutenant read to him. Their prayers were answered. After four hours, Kidby left the ledge. On Feb. 18, he prepared to jump from the sixth floor of the Athens city parking garage. Police...

Very few people could have looked upon Chantal Sébire at the end of her life and not understood why the former schoolteacher wished to end it. Left horribly disfigured and in frequent torment from incurable tumors that amassed in her sinuses and skull, Sébire's plea that doctors be allowed to legally terminate her life deeply moved French public opinion. It also prompted considerable reexamination of the nation's laws prohibiting active euthanasia —reflection that has continued in the wake of Sébire's March 19 suicide. But the passionate debate Sébire's case sparked may well have unfolded differently had the French public been...

Teen Admits She Created Profile and Wrote Messages; Testifies Against Neighborhood Mom In an exclusive interview with "Good Morning America," Ashley Grills, 19, admitted she was part of a scheme to create a fake persona on MySpace and start an online romance with a 13-year-old neighbor, Megan Meier. Ashley Grills discusses her role in a MySpace scheme linked to a girl's suicide. Grills insisted, though, that she was not the only adult involved in the cruel hoax, which eventually led the emotionally vulnerable Meier to commit suicide in October 2006, after her spurious online boyfriend and others began making nasty...

WASHINGTON (BP)--Oregon recorded more deaths by physician-assisted suicide in 2007 than in any year in the decade since the practice was legalized. The Oregon Department of Human Services recently reported 49 people committed suicide last year using lethal doses of drugs prescribed by doctors. The previous yearly high was 46 in 2006. Oregon, the only state to legalize assisted suicide, has recorded 341 such deaths since its Death With Dignity Act took effect in late 1997. "The report shows that the situation in Oregon is not only creepy but creeping," bioethicist C. Ben Mitchell told Baptist Press. "Compassion means providing...

A German lawyer and politician has unveiled Europe's first suicide machine for people with a death wish as "an act of Christian love". The machine that can be rented and is then collected to be re-used by other clients kills painlessly at the push of a button. It was unveiled by Dr Roger Kusch, 53, head of a suicide assistance society in German, who said: "Press one button, and seconds later death arrives." Death wish: The machine gives a lethal injection at the touch of a button The machine, which is smaller than the size of a shoebox, and is...

Teenagers should be given the right to medically assisted suicide and the parents of terminally ill younger children should be able to choose euthanasia under proposals from members of Belgium's coalition government. The plans to extend rules allowing doctors to perform euthanasia on terminally ill people suffering "constant and unbearable physical or psychological pain" comes amid heated Belgian debate on the issue. Under existing Belgian laws, in place since 2002, patients, other than newborn babies, must be over 18 to qualify for assisted suicide, a situation that Bart Tommelein, leader of Belgium Liberals, wants changed. Mr Tommelein, whose party is...

WASHINGTON - The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday it is investigating a possible link between Merck’s best-selling asthma drug, Singulair, and suicide. FDA said it is reviewing reports of mood changes, suicidal behavior and suicide in patients who have taken the popular drug also used for allergies. Merck has updated the drug’s labeling four times in the past year to include information on a range of side effects: tremors, anxiousness, depression and suicidal behavior.

March 24, 2008, 5:00 a.m. Chilling ConfirmationYes, Saddam Hussein was an Islamofascist threat. By Deroy Murdock As Operation Iraqi Freedom is now five years old, a new study confirms that ousting Saddam Hussein was justified and vital to U.S. national security. Though war critics hate to admit it, the Baathist dictator was up to his mustache in aid for Islamofascist terrorism. As a report from the Institute for Defense Analyses explains, “captured Iraqi documents uncovered strong evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to regional and global terrorism.� IDA’s review of some 600,000 documents discovered in Iraq since...

D.C. Fire Hazmat Teams responded to an apparent suicide in the District after fire officials said the man may have killed himself using cyanide. Police got a call around 4:30 p.m. on Monday for an unconscious male at a house in the 4300 block of 36th Street. Two officers responded and found a man laying next to a small vile of cyanide. Immediately, fire officials said police left the home and called in the hazmat crew, which is standard procedure. -snip-

Amsterdam, Netherlands (LifeNews.com) -- A Netherlands psychiatrist who assisted in the suicide of a grieving mother that ultimately led to the Dutch Supreme Court ruling that the depressed should have the right to kill themselves has now published a do-it-yourself guide to committing suicide. The guide is expected to go on sale soon in the European nation and it contains detailed information on how people can use drugs to kill themselves. It also contains information on how to perform other acts of suicide using starvation techniques and describes the quickest and least painful ways to do so. "Doctors learn little...

LONDON (AP) ― Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling said she contemplated suicide as she suffered from depression before her rise to success, according to an interview with a student journalist. The British writer said she had suicidal thoughts in her mid-20s, when she was a single mother and struggling to establish a literary career. "Mid-20s life circumstances were poor and I really plummeted," Rowling said, according to an interview posted online by student journalist Adeel Amini. Rowling said in the interview, parts of which were published in Edinburgh University's Student magazine, that she sought help from doctors and spent nine...

A severely disfigured French woman was found dead at her home Wednesday, a local prosecutor said, only two days after a court rejected her request for the right to die, in a case that has stirred much emotion in France. The high court in Dijon, eastern France, decided Monday to side with the prosecution which argued that current legislation does not allow the doctor of 52-year-old former schoolteacher Chantal Sebire to prescribe lethal drugs. In her appeal to the court, Sebire had said she did not want to endure further pain and subject herself to an irreversible worsening of her...

An 81-year-old Australian man has shot himself dead with an elaborate suicide robot built using plans he downloaded from the Internet. The Gold Coast man, who lived alone, left notes of his plans and thoughts as he struggled to come to terms with demands by interstate relatives that he move out his home and into care. He spent hours searching the Internet for a way to kill himself, downloaded what he needed and then built a complex machine that would remotely fire a gun. He set the device up in his driveway about 7 a.m. Wednesday, placed himself in front...

PITTSBURGH - Vicki Van Meter, celebrated for piloting a plane across the country at age 11 and from the U.S. to Europe at age 12, has died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound, the Crawford County coroner said. She was 26. Van Meter died Saturday and her body was found in her Meadville home on Sunday. Her brother said she battled depression and opposed medication, but her family thought she had been dealing with her problems. "She was unhappy, but it was hard for her to open up about that and we all thought that she was coping," Daniel Van...

PITTSFIELD, Mass. (AP) — A man who gave a loaded gun to his suicidal friend to "snap her out of it" and then watched in shock as she killed herself was sentenced Friday to up to five years in prison for his role in her death. Christopher Burda, a lighting company owner with no previous criminal record, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter Tuesday for the November 2005 suicide of Nancy Choquette of Stamford, Vt. He wiped away tears throughout his sentencing, then apologized to Choquette's family and his own. "My deepest condolences and most heartfelt apologies," he said haltingly, often...

I have written a great deal about the anti-Semitic psychopathology of the Palestinians. I have described their illness as self defeating and self destructive. I have pointed out that every nation that has attempted to destroy the Jews has failed and been destroyed in turn. I have also written about the dangerous fecklessness of the Israeli government and the Israeli Left which believes that, against all historical evidence, this time the Palestinians really are committed to Peace. The evidence to the contrary continues to accrete, yet Palestinian genocidal threats, and similar threats from their supporters in Iran, Hezbollah, Saudi Arabia,...

A male student shot himself in the head at the Davidson High School gymnasium this morning in front of about 150 other students, according to Mobile police. The unnamed boy walked into the gym shortly before 10 a.m. and fired one shot with a revolver into the ceiling before shooting himself, said Deputy Chief James Barber. The student died at the scene. The school temporarily went into lockdown. Davidson will remain open today and extra counselors are being brought in, according to Nancy Pierce, a school system spokeswoman. Parents can pick their children up if they want, she said, and...

An Alabama high school student walked into the school gym Thursday morning and shot himself in front of 150 other students, WKRG.com reported. Jajuan Homes, 18, reportedly fired one shot into the ceiling of the gym at Davidson High School in Mobile before turning the revolver on himself as other students watched.

SANTA ANA, Calif. — A 52-year-old man jumped to his death from a Southern California courthouse balcony hours after being convicted of child molestation, authorities said. Carlos Edward Tello was facing more than 20 years in prison when he jumped from a ninth-floor balcony of the Central Justice Center in Santa Ana Tuesday afternoon. A suicide note was tucked into his clothing, authorities said. snip... Superior Court Judge Greggory Prickett declined to revoke Tello's bail, instead ordering him to return to the Fullerton courtroom by 4:30 p.m. Just after 4 p.m. at the Santa Ana courthouse, an alarm sounded that...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A $100 million lawsuit claiming that NBC prompted the suicide of a former Texas prosecutor who was caught up in its popular sting series "To Catch a Predator" is moving ahead after a ruling by a U.S. federal judge on Tuesday. Louis Conradt, a 56-year-old assistant district attorney, shot himself in November 2006 after he was confronted at his Terrell, Texas, home by police officers. They were accompanied by an NBC news crew that was there to film his arrest."To Catch a Predator," a segment of NBC's "Dateline" newsmagazine program, lures men to a house with...

“Death has replaced sex as the taboo subject of our times,” said one of the world’s richest men and leading philanthropists, George Soros, when he launched the Project Death in America fund at Columbia University’s College of Physicians & Surgeons in 1994. It promotes euthanasia or assisted suicide, and has been succeeded by the Open Society Institute’s International Palliative Care Initiative . Soros’s mother committed suicide, as a member of the Hemlock Society . His father died a lingering death from cancer, and Soros was “disappointed” at the way the old man clung miserably to life.

Abortion, Depression, Suicide: Phantom numbers real pain. Is there a link between abortion, depression and suicide? A British artist killed herself after aborting twins recently. A day before her 31st birthday. Why? Her note said the following: “I told everyone I didn't want to do it, even at the hospital. I was frightened, now it is too late. I died when my babies died. I want to be with my babies: they need me, no one else does.” Did she need counseling? Why didn't any of the professional people around her help?

I found this at The Freedom FIghter Blog. At first I thought it was a hoax. However I read through the blog and it became obvious that the author was a troubled person. I then searched on his name and found a death notice for the day of the posting in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. These are all the facts I have, and both links are included, but at this point it appears to be the an actual suicide note. ---------- BEGIN BLOG ---------- THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE What would you do If you were asked to give up your dreams...

A talented artist hanged herself because she was overcome with grief after aborting her twins, an inquest heard yesterday. Emma Beck, 30, left a note saying: "Living is hell for me. I should never have had an abortion. "I see now I would have been a good mum. I told everyone I didn't want to do it, even at the hospital." "I was frightened, now it is too late. I died when my babies died. "I want to be with my babies - they need me, no one else does." Yesterday an inquest heard that in the run-up to the...

There is nothing wrong with appreciating other cultures or with saluting various ethnic groups and subcultures. But multiculturalism as an ideology denies that a nation has a culture of its own and turns cultural differences into a pretext for moral relativism. The ideology of multiculturalism permeates America's intellectual and educational establishments, but it has gone even further in other Western nations. When a British schoolteacher in Sudan accepted a class vote to name a teddy bear Mohammed, she was arrested, tried, and imprisoned for the crime of insulting the prophet as angry Muslim mobs demanded the death penalty. Some Britons...

Head of Russia’s Army Housing Service found dead The Russian Prosecutor’s General Office is investigating the death of a senior officer. General- Colonel Viktor Vlasov was the acting head of the army's housing service at the Defence Ministry. According to the Ria Novosti news agency, the General was found dead in his Moscow office on Thursday morning. A gun was found next to his body. The 57-year-old Vlasov took the position in 2007. ”A criminal investigation has been launched into the suicide of the acting head of army's housing service General-Colonel Viktor Vlasov. An investigation group has been set up....

He seemed to abandon the fight in the last year.CLEARWATER - Shawn Lonsdale, whose one-man crusade against Scientology made him a public enemy of the church, was found dead at his home over the weekend in an apparent suicide. He was 39. Police discovered Lonsdale's body at 12:20 p.m. Saturday after neighbors reported a foul odor. They found a garden hose stretched from the exhaust pipe of Lonsdale's car into a window of his home at 510 N Lincoln Ave., according to Clearwater police spokeswoman Elizabeth Daly-Watts. Daly-Watts said there were no signs of foul play, and police found...

A 10-year-old boy has hanged himself within days of talking to his mother about the recent spate of internet-related suicides in Bridgend. Cameron McWilliams had few friends and spent most of his spare time reading or playing on either an Xbox or a laptop computer. He had also told his mother, Kelly, that he was interested in wearing girls’ clothes and wanted one day to have a sex change. Mrs McWilliams, of Intake, Doncaster, South Yorkshire, found him with a belt around his neck on Monday. She told an inquest in the town that her son had been teased after...

A network of "suicide gurus" who use the internet to advise people how to kill themselves has been exposed.   Death cult: Nagasiva Yronwode, of the Church of Euthanasia They are blamed for prompting depressed and vulnerable youngsters to take their own lives.One, an American satanist who boasts of writing a guide to the subject, says: "What's the problem with ending your life via suicide?"Another is a "pro-choice" Dutch writer whose website includes detailed accounts of dozens of suicide methods.Campaigners have uncovered 29 "internet suicides" in Britain since 2001, including two new cases reported this weekend. The findings follow...

AN expression of true love or raw hatred, of purest faith or mortal sin, of courageous loyalty or selfish cowardice: The act of suicide has meant many things to many people through history, from the fifth-century Christian martyrs to the Samurais’ hara-kiri to more recent literary divas, Hemingway, Plath, Sexton. But now the shadow of suicide has slipped into the corridors of modern medicine as a potential drug side effect, where it is creating a scientific debate as divisive and confounding as any religious clash. And the shadow is likely to deepen. After a years-long debate about whether antidepressant drugs...