Regarding the June 4 "Couple leap to death in Britain with dead kid": This terrible story was given wide coverage by the British tabloids, and I don't think the (Kyodo) article that appeared in The Japan Times did it justice. Kazumi Puttick met her British husband, Neil, when they were undergraduates at a U.K. university. They married, moved to an idyllic home in the Wiltshire countryside and had a lovely little boy, Marty. Kazumi worked as a translator for a major Japanese car company.
The family was a part of village life and very popular. They had everything going for them when tragedy struck — the car that Kazumi was driving was hit by a very careless driver. Kazumi suffered a broken pelvis and broken legs; Marty was severely crippled. From then on, Kazumi and her husband devoted their time to enriching poor Marty's life.
And then tragedy struck a second time — Marty contracted a very virulent form of meningitis. The hospital couldn't do anything for the 5-year-old, so he was allowed to go home to die. But his death was the end of the world for Kazumi and her husband, so they decided to end their lives and carry Marty's body with them to a better place.
When I read the breaking news, I couldn't fathom the mind-set of Kazumi and her husband. But after the whole tragic story evolved, I understood a lot better and like many others have the deepest sympathy for Kazumi, her husband, little Marty and all their poor relatives and friends.