The seaside town of Noto in Japan has ruffled feathers after using cash from an emergency Covid-19 relief grant to build a giant statue of a squid.
The 43ft sea creature celebrates the iconic flying squid, the town’s delicacy.
But it reportedly used £164,700 of emergency funding to build the statue as part of its plan to lure tourists back after the pandemic.
Japan is battling another surge in coronavirus cases, and Tokyo is currently under a state of emergency – the third for the country since the pandemic began.
As you’d expect, the mis-appropriation of the emergency funding has caused a heck of a negative stir, with locals and media saying it should have been used for urgent Covid support instead. It’s all a bit of a mess, isn’t it?