■SOUTH KOREA
'Widow' scammer caught
A woman who held a funeral for her husband after claiming he was lost at sea scammed insurers out of US$800,000 before he was found alive and well, police said yesterday. The fraud in the southeastern town of Tongyeong is part of an increasing trend of bogus claims, insurers say. It began in March 2006 when she told police that her husband had failed to return from a fishing trip, a police spokesman in the nearby city of Changwon said. The husband had left his boat adrift and sneaked back ashore on a different boat as a major sea search was launched. He went to ground for some three years elsewhere in the country as his wife successfully filed claims totaling 1.1 billion won (US$800,000) with six insurance firms. She even held a funeral for her spouse, receiving the customary condolence cash payments from mourners.
■JAPAN
Woman sentenced to death
The Supreme Court sentenced a woman to death yesterday for killing four people and making more than 60 ill by poisoning a large pot of curry at a summer festival in 1998, a case widely covered in domestic media. The incident shocked the nation, where crime rates are relatively low and mass killings extremely rare. Public broadcaster NHK reported the Supreme Court upheld a lower court death sentence on Masumi Hayashi, 47, for the crime that took place in the western city of Wakayama. The Supreme Court called the crime “cruel and despicable,” NHK said. Prosecutors charged Hayashi became enraged after being shunned by her neighbors and put arsenic in the curry when she was alone in the garage where it was being prepared, media said.
■NEW ZEALAND
Tourist angered by 'Eskimo'
A New Zealand lolly called an Eskimo and in the stereotypical shape of an Inuit person has angered a Canadian tourist who says it is an insult to her people, a newspaper reported yesterday. Seeka Lee Veevee Parsons, 21, an Inuit from Canada’s Nunavut Territory, told the Taranaki Daily News that the word Eskimo, used by confectionery manufacturer Cadbury/Pascall in its popular lolly mix, was unacceptable because it had negative racial connotations. Eskimo means “eater of raw meat,” she said, and the correct term for her people is Inuit. Parsons said she would send packets of the lollies to both Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and her grandfather, an Inuit tribal elder in the Nunavut Territory, presumably to encourage a protest. She said that New Zealanders would not like to see confectionery in the shape of indigenous Maoris and if anything the lollies should be shaped like a seal, the Inuits’ main source of food.
■THAILAND
Toes lead to robbery suspect
Police have arrested a suspected thief who left his toes at the scene of the crime, media reports said yesterday. Atthapol Maenkrathok, 42, was arrested over the weekend at a hospital in Uttaradit Province where he was being treated for a severed foot. Police said Atthapol was charged with robbing a woman of her cash and a US$1,000 gold necklace on the overnight train from Chiang Mai to Bangkok on April 7, the Bangkok Post reported. Investigators linked Atthapol to the theft after finding his bag of tools on the train, including an identification card, and five of his severed toes on the train track in Uttaradit, 380km north of Bangkok. Atthapol told police he had snagged his foot under the wheels while jumping off the train in Uttaradit.
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