Death call for Japan's alleged curry killer

Japanese prosecutors have asked for the death penalty for a 40-year-old housewife charged with murdering four people by feeding them poisoned curry.

According to the indictment, Masumi Hayashi cooked arsenic-laced curry, which killed two children and two adults and made 63 others ill in July 1998 at a community festival in Wakayama, some 450km west of Tokyo.

Prosecutors said Hayashi poisoned the curry because she became enraged after other women neighbours had spurned her for turning up too late to take part in preparing food for the festival.