Parliamentary security director Aaro Toivonen confirmed a death occurred within the building but declined to provide additional details to Newsweek. The incident took place during parliament's summer recess period, which continues until September.

"The death of Eemeli Peltonen deeply shocks me and all of us," Social Democratic Party parliamentary group chair Tytti Tuppurainen stated. "He was a very well-liked member of our community, and we will miss him greatly. A young life has ended far too soon. We share in the grief of his loved ones and wish them strength in the midst of their sorrow."

Peltonen had recently disclosed health struggles through social media, revealing kidney disease treatment and subsequent secondary infection complications that required medical leave from parliamentary duties. His final Instagram post detailed these medical challenges affecting his legislative service.

The young lawmaker secured his parliamentary seat in the 2023 elections with 5,747 votes, subsequently joining the administration and legal affairs committees. Beyond national politics, Peltonen served on Järvenpää City Council and held the position of City Board Chairman, making him the youngest person ever to hold that role after first winning election at age 18.

Centre Party chair and former defense minister Antti Kaikkonen honored Peltonen's memory through a social media tribute. "I also came to know him as a warm and sympathetic person," Kaikkonen expressed. "The news of Eemeli's passing is shocking and deeply saddening. I extend my deepest condolences to Eemeli's family and loved ones. Wishing them strength in their great sorrow."

Iltalehti newspaper initially reported the parliamentary death, with Ilta-Sanomat providing subsequent confirmation. Public broadcaster Yle sought verification from security officials, who did not dispute the reporting from other media outlets.

Prime Minister Petteri Orpo conveyed shock and sadness regarding his colleague's death, Ilta-Sanomat reported. Parliament officials issued a statement acknowledging the death while noting that "Parliament will not comment further on the case while the coroner's investigation is ongoing."

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What do you do when your beautiful, outgoing, loving daughter ends her life? If you were my husband, Shalom Hammer, you would say: 'I have to do something.' I don't want anyone else to go through what we've gone through.

Five and a half years ago, our 18-year-old daughter ended her life. She had been suffering, silently and painfully, after a traumatic experience she endured at 16. We only learned about it a year later. During that year, her bubbly, loud personality began to fade. What had been an energetic, extroverted, compassionate, and deeply empathetic girl became angry and withdrawn. She stopped participating in her youth group and spent most of her time in her room.

We thought it was typical teenage behavior. It wasn't. When we finally found out about her trauma, thanks to a teacher who gently encouraged Gila to share, everything suddenly made sense. It wasn't too late, but without real guidance, support, and education, we didn't know how to give her the help she truly needed. We were suddenly thrust into a complex world of bureaucracy, lengthy waitlists, and uncertainty.

Over the 18 months that followed, Gila was prescribed medication, but she never received focused trauma therapy. She was turned away from hospitals when she asked for help. She sat on waitlists, stalled by bureaucracy, and was twice sent home from the ER after swallowing pills, clear cries for help that were never truly answered. One doctor told me: "Our job in the ER is to make sure someone doesn't die. She's alive. Take her home and get her help."

Eventually, she was admitted to an institution, where she had three very positive weeks. After discharge, Gila was sent home with nothing in place. No framework. No meaningful routine. No social connection. Her friends were moving on to the army, Sherut Leumi, and yeshiva. She was stuck. The loneliness and feelings of uselessness were crushing. She spent four long months at home, waiting for approval after approval. And we, her parents, had no idea where to turn.

A few months after her death, my husband said, "Enough." After taking a Mental Health First Aid course and learning about suicidal ideation, he was devastated. "Gila had been suicidal," he realized. Not every day, but in waves, the way suicidal thoughts often come. We had said the wrong things. Offered the wrong responses. Not because we didn't care, but because we didn't know what the right responses were.

Looking back, she showed every sign of suicidal ideation. But we didn't know what those signs were. No one sat down with us, or with her, to talk directly about suicide. Even the psychiatrist who saw her the day she died didn't conduct a full suicide risk assessment, a conversation that could have made all the difference.

So he started speaking out. He began telling our story. Not for sympathy but rather for prevention. To raise awareness. To remove stigma. And to help make sure no one else lives with the anguish and grief we now carry. From this pain, we created Gila's Way based on the core values Gila exemplified in her life. Deep compassion, empathy, and making others feel seen by lending a helping hand. Gila's Way is based on the lessons we learned far too late and on Gila's own values, her strength, and the compassion she showed others even while she was suffering.

We educate and apply real, practical tools for suicide prevention. We introduced the CAMS (Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicidality) program to Israel. A gold-standard model from the US that helps therapists directly address suicidal thoughts while avoiding hospitalization, and we're training clinicians across the country.

We offer free consultations for families who are dealing with someone in crisis to help advise them on navigating their loved one to safety and recovery. This past year alone, we offered 190 such consultations.

We've launched over 20 "Spread Joy Days" on college campuses, where students learn how to check in with friends, recognize warning signs, and talk about mental health. We visit schools, pre-army academies, parent groups, and teachers. We teach how to listen. How to ask. How to act.

And we're working, slowly but persistently, to open doors inside the IDF. The army is particularly challenging. Most soldiers are young adults, and aside from being a very vulnerable age, they encounter a lot of pressure and various experiences that can be triggering and traumatizing. In a moment of despair, a soldier's access to weapons can be fatal.

Recently, there have been several suicides in the army. After two of them, my husband received calls from soldiers in the unit and from concerned parents. In both cases, it became clear that soldiers weren't given the space or support to talk about what had happened. From the conversations had, it's obvious that their commanders receive very little training in suicide awareness and prevention. That kind of training needs to be built into the military curriculum. Soldiers themselves need to know how to check in on one another, recognize warning signs, and act when something feels off.

The army is a hard institution to break into. But we must. Because every life matters, whether in uniform or not. This week alone, Gila's Way is addressing soldiers in the north, and in the south.

Suicide prevention shouldn't be a niche topic reserved for professionals. It needs to be a national conversation, something every person in this country learns about. We can't be afraid to talk about it. We can't keep avoiding the word "suicide" as if silence will protect us. It won't. While the army may publicly acknowledge some suicides, many go unreported or are only briefly mentioned, and few of us know how many lives have truly been lost to suicide this year, in or out of uniform. Every one of those lives mattered. And so does our responsibility to learn, speak up, and act before it's too late. There is still a dangerous stigma around mental health and suicide. Too many people still say, "This could never happen to us." But it can. And it does; that was once us.

In a moment of despair, suicidal thoughts can translate into action. Without the correct tools, the right support, and awareness, lives are lost. For these reasons, as we approach September 10, International Suicide Prevention Day, Gila's Way is hosting "Suicide Revealed" in Jerusalem, Bet Shemesh, and Ranana. Suicide Revealed screens a film called "Levi" about a young man in the Jewish community of Manchester, UK, who is plagued by suicidal thoughts. Following the film, a panel discussion will take place on identifying suicidal signs, response, and treatment.

Gila's Way was established because no one should be turned away when they ask for help. Because no parent should be left in the dark. Because suicide can be prevented, when and if spoken about correctly. Let's stop whispering about suicide and let's start learning how to prevent it, because education and awareness can save a life.

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TID the 64-year-old co-founder of Fandango, an online movie ticketing company, died by suicide after jumping from the 20th floor of The Kimberly Hotel in midtown Manhattan. He left a note expressing pain and love for others.

Cline, a Cornell University graduate with an MBA from Harvard, founded Fandango in 2000, which became a major online movie ticket retailer with its recognizable orange "F" logo, and was later acquired by Comcast in 2007, along with other movie-related websites like Rotten Tomatoes.

Cline was a serial entrepreneur who co-founded Fandango and other startups. He was instrumental in negotiating relationships with major movie theater chains for Fandango.

At the time of his death, Cline was involved with various ventures, including a private equity firm, a venture fund, and serving as the chairman of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, advocating for conservation efforts. He was also involved with companies including Acumen, Accolade, Accretive, R1 RCM, Insureon, and Everspring.

Cline, a resident of Palm Beach, Florida, owned multimillion-dollar properties in the Hamptons and Palm Beach, including a $21 million property purchased in 2020 with his wife, Pamela B. Cline, whom he married in 1995 and had six children with.

He was described as creative, generous, and philanthropic by a former colleague, particularly supporting environmental causes.

Cline's death occurred days after he underwent gallbladder surgery. He is survived by his wife, Pamela, and their six children. The Kimberly Hotel has not commented on the incident.

Accretive, Juxtapose, Fandango, Pamela Cline, and Harvard University did not respond to requests for comment from TechCrunch and the New York Post.

Sources: NBC News, NY Times, CNN, Independent, HuffPost, NY Post, TechCrunch, Engadget, The Epoch Times, Yahoo, Newsmax, Daily Caller, Suggest, En-Volve, IMDb, Local 12

This article was written in collaboration with Generative AI news company Alchemiq.

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Calls among ultra-Orthodox activists to break the code of silence regarding sexual abuse have been growing in the wake of the suicide of popular author Chaim Walder last month, and the subsequent suicide of one of his victims.

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Walder, 52, committed suicide after the Israel Police opened an investigation into sexual assault allegations against him. In an unusual move, a rabbinical court also announced it was looking into the case, citing dozens of testimonies had been heard against him.

Several days after his death, one of his victims, Shifra Horovitz, committed suicide, sending additional shock waves through the community where the handling of sex crimes is infamously lacking.

"Did a young woman sacrifice herself in order to be heard for things to move?" said Esty Shushan, founder of Nivcharot, ("Chosen") the only ultra-Orthodox feminist organization in Israel.

"All this big talk about feminism and gender equality overrides everything. Women must have the right to speak up and be heard after being silenced for so long, while this criminal blossomed," she said.

Nivcharot aims to promote the status and rights of ultra-Orthodox women and include them in political processes.

Roughly 320,000 flyers reading "We all believe the victims" were distributed in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods across Israel, a response to some rabbis asserting that any allegations of sexual assault against Walder or other prominent Haredi figures constitute "lashon hara" or malicious gossip – a practice forbidden under the Halacha, or Jewish law.

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"For an ultra-Orthodox man to speak out against a criminal of such stature is tantamount to opposing his own establishment," said Avigayil Heilbronn, founder of "Don't Be Silent," an online campaign launched six years ago.

"Ultra-Orthodox politicians talk about the tax on plastic disposables. This is the worst crisis within the ultra-Orthodox community since the inception of the state. The immense majority of our rabbis don't know the meaning of 'sexual abuse.' They just don't know. It's not malice or evil, but ignorance. They must learn, and now they are."

This article was first published by i24NEWS.

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Israelis startup CoBe Labs has created an artificial intelligence-based application to help teens struggling with mental health.

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ChatBot uses teenagers' day-to-day language and fuses it with proven diagnosis and treatment protocols and utilizes cognitive processes used by psychotherapists to collect and analyze data and fuse it with treatment protocols.

ChatBot creates a personalized, authentic conversation and is there to listen, encourage and suggest ways to cope with anxiety and life's stress.

Talking to users via smartphones, ChatBot can immediately help an unlimited number of teenagers, an apparent solution to the growing waitlists to see psychologists. More than one in eight teenagers struggle with their mental health, and roughly 46,000 adolescents commit suicide each year, a global figure that alarmed the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in their annual report.

Speaking with i24NEWS, Dr. Claudia Lang, a senior psychologist and clinical expert who for 10 years led a department dedicated to children and teens, eluded to the rise in the use of social media as the main cause.

"Bullying is something that has been increasing because of social media," Dr. Lang said.

"[Teens] can hurt each other in ways that really hurt their self-esteem and development, and it leads to anxiety, depression, even suicide."

In the case of suicidal thoughts, ChatBot sends an alert to a support unit that immediately gets in touch with the user.

With the aid of Dr. Lang, the Israeli startup CoBe Labs created an easy and accessible outlet for teens in distress – ChatBot, developed by the founders Meir Rafael and Haddas Herzog Manor.

Manor, CEO, and co-founder of CoBe Labs, said, "It's a continuous engagement platform. It learns about you and creates some sort of universe of who you are and what your hobbies are, as well as your current mental state."

Already operating in the United States, CoBe Labs is sparking interest from health organizations and web giants who realize the opportunity to create safer, more positive environments.

i24NEWS contributed to this report. 

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Gila Hammer, the 18-year-old daughter of Rabbi Shalom Hammer, an educator in Israel for the past 30 years, died by suicide on Dec. 5, 2019.

Hammer told Jewish News Syndicate that following the shiva, the traditional seven-day mourning period, "I decided the only way that I could make sense of my loss, our loss – the only way that I could possibly continue and persist to exist – would be commemorating her by helping other people who are suffering, and hopefully, making an impact and saving their lives so that they should never have to experience or feel the tragic loss that we do every single minute of every day."

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A month after Gila's passing, Hammer, a resident of Beit Shemesh, was approached by Stuart Katz, the owner of a travel business whose own daughter was struggling with mental-health issues, about getting involved in a new initiative that he was introducing in Israel to help those who are at the onset of crisis.

Katz had founded the Israeli branch of Mental Health First Aid (MHFA), an Australian-based organization that since 2000 has been training individuals in countries worldwide to serve as "mental-health first-aiders" – those able to deliver initial help to people identified as grappling with certain issues until appropriate professional support is received or until the crisis resolves.

Hammer underwent the necessary training to become a certified mental health first responder as well as a trainer. On July 4, Hammer, along with instructor Ruchie Bromberg, launched the first-ever, 14-hour MHFA Israel Youth Course in Beit Shemesh with 17 participants to provide the tools they will need to become certified mental-health first-responders and help teens in crisis.

"The idea of the course is not to diagnose and not to offer therapy; it's a first-aid course for responders," said Hammer. "Just like someone from Hatzalah or [Magen David Adom] who arrives to help someone who is physically sick or in danger of losing their life knows how to respond, the same response [would apply] with regard to mental health."

Participants are taught how to spot the signs and symptoms of mental health problems in young people, as well as learn effective initial help strategies and how to guide a young person towards appropriate treatment.

Hammer noted that mental-health emergencies are more challenging to treat because such issues are simply more difficult to identify and more complex by nature.

He added that as a first responder, the goal when identifying teens who are suffering is to "bring them back to be grounded, more at ease, and then they would be willing to remind themselves that 'I do have reason to live, I do have options that I can explore,' and bring them to the next stage, which would be therapy or a hospital."

Hammer explained that the course is geared for anyone who works with youth under the age of 18, including educators, youth directors, guidance counselors and parents (the subset he feels are most in need of the course), along with mental-health professionals themselves.

Fourteen of the 17 participants who started the course on Sunday are from the Lema'an Achai organization, which fights poverty in Israel, while the other three joined independently.

'An army of people who can help save lives'

Avi Tenenbaum, an Israel-based mental-health counselor who since 2010 has been running a private practice specializing in addiction treatment and acute trauma that occurs following a catastrophic event, also served as the former director of the Psychotrauma and Crisis Response Unit at United Hatzalah of Israel. He has trained thousands of first responders in psychological first aid. (The United Hatzalah Psychotrauma and Crisis Response Unit are currently in Surfside, Fla., working with survivors and family members of the recent condominium collapse.)

As a result of Tenenbaum's expertise in providing aid for families coping in the wake of large-scale disasters, he was called to the scene in the immediate aftermath of the Tree of Life Synagogue mass shooting in Pittsburgh in 2018, Hurricane Harvey that ravaged Texas and Louisiana in 2017, the 2016 Haifa fires and many other tragedies.

Tenenbaum, who was contacted by Katz to serve as a consultant and help design the curriculum for the MHFA Youth Course, told JNS that he is a big believer that average individuals, with a minimum amount of training, can play a huge role in saving lives.

"In the addiction field, one of the biggest resources is the 12-step groups, like Alcoholics Anonymous. What it essentially is," he explained, "is a peer support group – a grassroots group where you are able to give very minimal training to people, and then they go and help each other with their own life experience and their own knowledge, and are able to help one another in a tremendous way."

Tenenbaum discovered "that in the addiction field, and then in the trauma field with the unit that I ran as well, we were able to take regular people, first responders, without psychology degrees and give them a basic course, and basic tips and tools in crisis intervention, and with minimal training, they made enormous differences in people's lives during crises."

He said, "You can tap into this enormous resource of regular people who are already in the community and who know people, including the teens who are suffering. Maybe it's their gym teacher or mini-market guy that sells milk, but they are there already. Just give them the tools to help others. All of a sudden, you have an army of people who can help save lives."

In terms of the current picture of teens suffering from mental health issues in Israel, Tenenbaum said that, unfortunately, statistics from government agencies on the topic, specifically from the Health Ministry, are not available. "Whether teens or adults, I found that the statistics in Israel are greatly lacking in a shocking way. Israel is a leader in the world in many areas, but when it came to the statistics about mental health among teens, it was so lacking."

He added, "You don't have the information. We don't even know our own situation. You have this very imperfect picture of how bad it is. And it's worse than it is. It's not that we have zero information, but it's very incomplete."

'Pay more attention to our teens'

Tenenbaum said that when he needs information or statistics, he often turns to the research commissioned independently by Headspace, an organization in Israel with centers in Jerusalem and Bat Yam, and which offers walk-in mental-health services for Israeli teens.

According to research per their website, more than 80% of adolescent mental disorders are not diagnosed or treated properly. In Israel, only 34% of adolescents aged 14 to 17 years suffering from mental disorders seek professional help due to inaccessible services, lack of knowledge and the stigma attached to seeking treatment.

Tenenbaum described Headspace's statistics as being "alarming."

"We hope Israel will be able to pull more information to get a clearer picture of the situation," he said." That will create the urgency to pay more attention to our teens, to allocate more resources to do whatever it takes to help them."

Katz told JNS that he got involved in the mental-health field when his daughter self-diagnosed herself three years ago.

"One thing I realized pretty fast, and which was verified by the professionals, is that the biggest obstacle is the stigma surrounding mental health issues," he acknowledged. "Mental health is a taboo topic until you come face to face with it. What people don't realize is that 50% of the population at some point of their lives will face mental-health issues head-on. Tragically, people don't realize it even when they are facing it."

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It is for those reasons that Katz not only became certified as a first responder, taking the course in the United States but became certified as a trainer as well. There are currently only five Israelis (including Katz and Tenenbaum) who can train the trainers and 12 individuals (including Hammer) who can teach the course.

Katz said that for the past two years, he has been advocating for the MHFA youth courses in Israel and for the past 10 months has been building the foundation, leading to this week's initial course.

"If someone is not literally bleeding from their brain, but in pain, something is wrong, and we have to be able to know how to assist them," he said. "We like to deal with this in non-crisis situations, and we don't want them to become crisis situations, just like with any type of physical issue."

He said he hopes that the number of those who achieve certification will "multiply like rabbits," so as to increase the chances of potentially saving lives.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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