this is getting old...another one? how sad - from last week

Police found three bodies inside a parked van in a suspected group suicide, police said Tuesday. Two men and a woman were found next to burned charcoal in a van parked in a mountainous area in Sumoto, Hyogo Prefecture, according to local police.

The victims are the latest in a string of people who join pacts to kill themselves together, including those set up among strangers over the Internet -- though it wasn't immediately clear how the latest group met. Though Internet suicide pacts have occurred since at least the late 1990s in a number of countries, they have been most common in Japan, where the suicide rate is among the industrialized world's highest.

A record 91 people died in 34 Internet-linked suicide cases last year, up from 55 people in 19 cases in 2004, according to latest figures from the National Police Agency. The number of Internet suicide pacts has almost tripled from 2003, when the agency started keeping records. Still, Internet-related suicides still represent a small percentage of suicides in the country.

Other experts suggest the Japanese are influenced by a traditional reverence of suicide. In feudal Japan, ritual suicide was considered an honorable death under the samurai warrior ethic. "Chushingura," a saga about 47 loyal samurai who avenged their master's death and then committed mass suicide in 18th century Japan, has been made into countless movies and TV dramas. "Japanese see suicide as tragic, yet beautiful or somehow sincere," said Usui.