ONE PILL MAKES YOU SMALLER

He was a real online Dr. Kevorkian.

Police arrested a Japanese man for allegedly killing a 21-year-old woman who paid him to carry out her plan through his Internet suicide site.


Kazunari Saito, 33, gave Sayaka Nishizawa sleeping pills and then suffocated her after she wrote to him in April through the site, which provided tips on how to commit suicide.

"I want to die, how can I die?" she wrote. Once Saito wrote back and told her, "I will give you lots of sleeping pills," the distraught woman then paid him $1,700, police said. It wasn't clear as to why she needed help.

Nishizawa's father found his daughter's body in her apartment just south of Tokyo. There was a note suggesting suicide, but her cell phone and keys were missing.

The suspect, an electrician by trade, told police the woman had asked him to "see her through" the dying process. Japan's suicide rate is among the highest in the industrialized world.

Officials didn't say if the Web site was still working.

What an entrepreneur!


Photo by Tata

SHOTS, ANYONE?

An Italian tourist was given a drip-feed of 100-proof vodka at an Australian hospital after doctors ran out of medicinal alcohol to treat the man for his condition.


The 24-year-old man, who was not named, ingested an antifreeze ingredient, ethylene glycol that causes renal failure. It was believed he was trying to take his life.

Pure alcohol is given in treating the toxic effects of ethylene glycol, but when the hospital ran out of the pharmaceutical-grade, doctors did the next best thing and put the dying man on spirits through a naso-gastric tube.

The drip-feed of vodka equaled out to about three drinks an hour for the three days the man spent in intensive care.

The Brisbane hospital officials said the incident happened about two months ago, but only just released the report. The patient made a successful recovery.

Does that mean he's now a recovering alcoholic?


Photo by Nic McPhee