SUICIDE NOT PAINLESS NOW: Accidental Attempted Murder-Suicide Girl
TOKYO – A woman leaped from an 11-story Tokyo apartment Wednesday in an apparent suicide, striking and seriously injuring a passer-by, Kyodo News reported on 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. She hit a 47-year-old male pedestrian who suffered a brain injury. Japan has one of the industrial world’s highest suicide rates, with more than 32,000 people taking their own lives in 2006. [via ASSOCIATED PRESS]
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DR. DOOLITTLE: First Non-Human To ‘Acquire’ Human Language Dead At 42
SPOKANE, Wash. – Washoe, a chimpanzee believed to be the first nonhuman to acquire human language, died Tuesday of natural causes at the research institute where she was kept. She was about 42 years old. Washoe [NOT pictured] made headlines in her youth – first with her apparent ability to communicate using American Sign Language, and then by teaching it to other chimpanzees in captivity. She first learned a bit of ASL in a research project in Nevada, eventually building up a vocabulary of about 250 words. Previous attempts to teach chimpanzees to imitate vocal languages had failed. For Washoe to be considered “reliable” on a sign, it had to be seen by three different observers in three separate instances. Then it had to be seen 15 days in a row to be added to her sign list. [via ASSOCIATED PRESS]
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EX-SPECIAL FORCES GUY: ‘Why I Had Myself Water-Boarded For The Gore-acle’
I had the technique performed on me during my time in the service as part of my SERE training (Survival Evasion Resistance Escape). I, like all Special Forces operatives who deploy overseas, was sent to a training camp where we learned to resist interrogation and survive captivity, god forbid that ever happened to us overseas. Ironically, one of the many techniques we learned during this training was to assert our rights as told under Article III of the Geneva Convention. Then, in mid March I traveled to Cambodia for Spring Break. While there I visited the Tuol Sleng (also known as S-21) prison in Phnom Penh. The Tuol Sleng prison had been converted to a museum and memorial for the victims of the Cambodian Genocide under the Pol Pot regime. As I walked through the museum and saw the photographs of the victims of the genocide, I was shocked to see a picture of the Khmer Rouge water-boarding a Cambodian villager. [via CURRENT TV]