■SOUTH KOREA
Cops crack down on fraud
Police in Seoul yesterday announced a crackdown on 61 juveniles who staged car accidents in an insurance fraud. They said the youths collected a total of 120 million won (US$97,200) by staging 46 car accidents in a scam from June 2007 to March this year. Three doctors have also been charged with involvement. The teenagers allegedly crashed their cars or motorcycles into other vehicles. After being hospitalized with minor injuries, they claimed compensation either from the other motorists or insurance companies. Police said the doctors are suspected of either colluding in or condoning the fraud because the youths turned up in their hospital abnormally often. One teenager is accused of carrying out the scam 11 times.
■CHINA
Wal-Mart staff kill woman
A woman in Jiangxi Province was allegedly beaten to death by five employees of a Wal-Mart store who accused her of shoplifting, a police report and state media said yesterday. Police have arrested two employees from the store, while three others are being investigated, Jingdezhen City police said in a report on their Web site. The report said the woman was beaten outside her home near the Wal-Mart on Aug. 30 and died in a city hospital last Wednesday from injuries suffered during the beating. Police said the five Wal-Mart employees had stopped the woman in the street and demanded to see her receipt, but she refused because she could not verify their identities, it said. Following an argument, the five Wal-Mart employees began beating her.
■CHINA
Mine blast leaves 35 dead
A coal mine blast killed 35 miners in central Henan Province and left 44 others trapped yesterday, the government said. The pre-dawn explosion happened at Xinhua No. 4 pit in Pingdingshan City, the State Administration of Work Safety said. A statement on the administration’s Web site did not give a reason for the blast. It said 14 miners managed to flee to safety. There were 93 men working underground at the time of the blast, it said.
■INDIA
Police killed four: probe
A judicial probe showed a 19-year-old female student and three others were killed in a staged encounter by police in Gujarat in 2004, reports said yesterday. The Gujarat State police had earlier said Ishrat Jahan and three others were part of a cell of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group plotting to assassinate state Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Police said Jahan, a Mumbai college student, and her boyfriend Pranesh Pillai, along with two alleged Pakistani nationals were killed in Gujarat’s capital Ahmedabad after a police chase on June 15, 2004. Jahan’s relatives claimed she was killed by the police in a staged clash and the magisterial court ruled that the killings were staged by the police officers to win promotions and rewards.
■SAMOA
Drivers switch to left side
Car horns and sirens sounded, church bells rang out and roads were crowded with vehicles and smiling drivers as the country became the first in decades to officially switch from right-side to left-side driving. Hundreds lined streets in the capital, Apia, to witness the early-morning switch on Monday as police manned checkpoints and warned drivers to be careful. There were no immediate signs of driving difficulties despite predictions of chaos from critics who accused the government of failing to adequately prepare drivers.
RSS