中国Power !!!

[Sprint]

Around the nation: Couple in row over their Tibetan mastiffs after pets bite eight neighbours

Also, official suspended over breast-grabbing photos, and proud dad plasters son's portrait all around town to celebrate the boy's 16th birthday

PUBLISHED : Thursday, 18 December, 2014, 10:29pm
UPDATED : Thursday, 18 December, 2014, 10:29pm

A Tibetan mastiff on sale on a street in China. A Shanxi couple have given up two of their dog but refuse to surrender a third after the pets attacked several neighbours. Photo: AFP

BEIJING

Bus blaze

An empty bus was burnt down to its metal frame in Fengtai district, Beijing, after its rear end caught fire yesterday morning, The Beijing News reports. Residents said the flames rose up to 2 metres high. Firefighters put out the blaze and no one was injured. The blaze is thought to have started from a spontaneous engine fire.

Flood causes ‘skating rink’

A pavement outside a gated community in Changping district’s Huilongguan neighbourhood became a “skating rink” after an underground water pipe broke, The Beijing News reports. The water froze into 3cm-thick ice after urban management officers and the community’s property management company refused to clean it up because they said it was not their responsibility.

FUJIAN

A father’s pride

The owner of an industrial trading company from Jinjiang city put up portraits of his son on 16 billboards along a major road to celebrate the boy’s 16th birthday, Mnw.cn reports. The father said his son was “the family’s treasure” and he wanted to share his happiness with everyone. The family owned the billboards and it cost them only 1,600 yuan (HK$2,024) to print the portraits, he added.

Sleazy night out

A Fuzhou property administrator was suspended after photos of him grabbing a barmaid’s breasts were widely circulated online, Nhaidu.com reports. Lin Zonghui, deputy bureau chief of a district housing and property administration, said he was set up by the bureau’s party secretary who had invited him to the nightclub. Twenty-six lewd photos of Lin having fun at the club were posted online earlier this week, sparking controversy.

GUANGDONG

Man of the trees

A 60-year-old man has been living in a home-made tree house in Foshan’s Chencun township for the past six years, the New Express reports. The 10 sq m house, held up by six trees, has a bedroom, living room, kitchen and bathroom. The man said his house could hold 20 people.

Teacher molester jailed

A 55-year-old physical education teacher from Guangzhou was sentenced to nine months’ jail for molesting a 10-year-old pupil, the Southern Metropolis News reports. The girl told the court that the teacher took her to the equipment room and molested her during PE classes for a whole semester. Investigators suspected that the man might have molested more pupils but failed to uncover evidence to prove that.

HEBEI

Poisonous ‘milk’

A seven-year-old boy from Bazhou city is in critical condition after he downed a bottle of pesticide thinking it was milk, the Beijing Youth Daily reports. He found the bottle hanging from a wall at home. The boy’s mother immediately took him to a clinic to have his stomach pumped, and he was later transferred to a Beijing hospital. But the boy fell into a coma after arriving in Beijing. Tests showed that the pesticide concentration in his blood was 10 per cent and that his lungs had turned black.

Student found dead

A senior student from Hebei University of Engineering in Handan city was found dead in front of his residential hall on Wednesday morning, the Yanzhao Evening News reports. His body was found on the ground at around 7am and there was no trace of blood or bruises on him, witnesses said. Investigators said the student was last seen in his dormitory at around 3am. Police are investigating the case.

JIANGSU

Museum ‘disrespect’

Photos of visitors striking unusual poses with Nanking massacre statues have sparked online controversy, with some commentators saying they were disrespectful, Modern Express reports. One photo showed a visitor at the museum in Nanjing pretending to kick a statue of a young man carrying the body of his grandmother. Staff members said they tried to dissuade people from such behaviour.

Man sits on neighbour

A 122kg man sat on a neighbour during a parking row in Nanjing, sending the neighbour to hospital with seven fractured ribs on Tuesday, the Yangtse Evening News reports. The neighbour was frustrated about residents parking on a lane, and the two men started quarrelling after the car owner refused to move his vehicle. The 122kg car owner then threw the neighbour to the ground and sat on him. He was later arrested.

SHAANXI

Wife dares man to leap

A woman dared her husband to follow through on his threat to jump off an elevated pedestrian walkway after they had a row in Xian, Huashang Daily reports. They were arguing when the man climbed over a fence and stood on the edge of the walkway. He said he would jump and the wife replied: “Jump if you dare”, witnesses said. Firefighters guided him to safety after a short stand-off.

Human waste flood

A blocked pipeline caused human waste to back up and flood a newly renovated flat in Yang county, Huashang Daily reports. A woman who said she bought the flat for her son for about 100,000 yuan, visited the home on Wednesday and found the bathroom was covered in faeces. She spent hours cleaning it up, the report said. The pipeline was blocked by a road improvement project, construction workers said.

SHANXI

Tibetan mastiff row

A couple gave up two Tibetan mastiffs but refuse to surrender a third although the pets have bitten eight people in their gated community in Ruicheng county, the Morning Life Post reports. One neighbour, who was bitten in the thigh, said the couple – who head the local grain administration and tourism department – sent two dogs away after the woman was attacked, but were holding on to the third. The couple said they had the proper permits for their pets and had covered all the victims’ medical costs.

Girl on ‘Ice diet’

A 17-year-old girl whom police found in a daze on the street said she had smoked Ice to lose weight, the Taiyuan Evening News reports. She said a friend gave her the drugs to help suppress her appetite. She was released without charge.

ZHEJIANG

Model blackmailed

A 27-year-old model in Hangzhou became the target of a blackmail attempt by a man who found nude pictures of her on her lost cellphone, the Du Shi Kuai Bao reports. The woman had lost her phone at a karaoke bar on Friday. She bought a replacement and soon began to receive WeChat messages from the man, who threatened to send the photos to people on her contact list unless she had sex with him. She refused and the photos were sent. Police are investigating.

Late-night, early cancer

A 31-year-old clerk from Hangzhou has been diagnosed with early stage stomach cancer after he ate late-night meals for years because of his long working hours, the Qianjiang Evening News reports. The man said he usually ate only after 9pm. His doctor said eating late could cause cancer because gastric fluids did not have time “to settle” throughout the night.

 

[AIpha]

Chinese villagers sign petition to banish boy, 8, with HIV

PUBLISHED : Thursday, 18 December, 2014, 10:49am
UPDATED : Thursday, 18 December, 2014, 4:05pm

Reuters in Shanghai

Kun Kun (not his real name) features in a news documentary. Photo: Screenshot

Authorities in a Chinese village have launched a “thought education” campaign after more than 200 villagers signed a petition to banish an eight-year-old boy infected with the HIV virus, state media said on Wednesday.

The boy, Kun Kun, from a village in the southwestern province of Sichuan, contracted the virus from his mother, the People’s Daily newspaper said on its website.

After he was diagnosed with the virus in 2011, he was expelled from school and ostracised by villagers, with one of them calling him a “ticking time bomb”, said the newspaper, the official paper of the ruling Chinese Communist Party.

In early December, more than 200 villagers, including Kun Kun’s guardian and grandfather, signed a petition to eject the boy from the village.

“Nobody wants to play with me,” the newspaper quoted Kun Kun as saying.

Villagers sign a petition to expel Kun Kun before the boy's very eyes (right). Photo: Screenshot

But in response to his treatment, the village mayor was quoted by the newspaper as saying Kun Kun enjoyed equal rights and “the township government will conduct ideological work on the villagers”.

People in China living with HIV and Aids face widespread discrimination and stigma, with even medical workers sometimes refusing to touch them.

Although the government has implemented polices and legislation aimed at stopping HIV/Aids discrimination, enduring misconceptions about the disease have led to children being barred from school and parents abandoning children.

UNAIDS estimates that China had 780,000 people infected with Aids at the end of 2011.

In 2012, President Xi Jinping visited a group of people living with HIV in Beijing, urging society to end discrimination and “to light up their lives with love”, state news agency Xinhua reported.

Some 200 villagers, including the boy's family, signed the petition before officials intervened on Kun Kun's behalf. Photo: Screenshot

 

[Pfizer]

http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/china-the-worlds-biggest-prison-for-journalists--xkmMmNg_tx

China: The world's biggest prison for journalists

Posted an hour ago by Matthew Champion in news

China is a world leader in many things, from carbon dioxide emissions to executions, and exports to, um, overall panda production.

To this list we can now add: total number of journalists jailed.

The above chart, from Statista, shows that as of December 17, 44 journalists were in prison in China out of the world total of 220.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, which compiled the figures, said the jailed journalists reflected new pressure members of the media had come under from president Xi Jinping.

Almost half of those jailed are Tibetan or Uighur, CPJ reported.

 

[skwyvlx]

http://i100.independent.co.uk/artic...est-of-the-world-combined-in-2013--ek3JSUfuUl

China executed more people than the rest of the world combined in 2013

Posted 2 months ago by Dina Rickman in news

China executed 2,400 people in 2013 - more than the rest of the world combined - according to estimates released by the Dui Hua foundation.

The data, charted by Statista, offer a rare insight into the death penalty in China, as Amnesty International stopped publishing data about China in 2009 due to the culture of secrecy in the country. Dui Hua, who have offices in Hong Kong and San Francisco say their estimate is based “on data points published in Southern Weekly [one of the biggest newspapers in China] that are consistent with information provided to Dui Hua by a judicial official earlier this year.”

The findings come shortly after Amnesty International released their own data on executions showing Saudi Arabia executed at least 79 people in 2013, while Iran executed 369 people. The United States executed 39 people.

According to Amnesty 778 people were executed across the world last year - which means if Dui Hua’s figures are accurate China executed three times as many people than everyone in the world combined last year.

 

[Revenge]

Around the nation: irate shopper sets mall ablaze

Also, passenger held over seat row and woman's throat slit in Shenzhen

PUBLISHED : Friday, 19 December, 2014, 6:36pm
UPDATED : Friday, 19 December, 2014, 6:41pm

Firefighters battle a blaze at the Guoqin Department Store in Dongguan. Photo: Xinhua

Anhui

‘Haunted’ house

The family of a man who got a girl from Bozhou pregnant tried to scare her away from their village house by pretending to be ghosts at night, the news website Hf365.com reports. The boyfriend broke off contact after she told him she was three months’ pregnant. She went to the family’s home, discovered no one inside and decided to wait for him. At night, she would hear knocking sounds at the door but no one was outside. The power and water were later turned off. She learned the family had fled and were trying to scare her away to avoid responsibility for the child.

Bare foot air passenger

A passenger has been detained after getting into a row with a cabin crew member aboard a China Southern flight from Hefei to Guangzhou in Guangdong, People.com.cn reports. The man had a ticket for economy class but moved into an empty seat in premium class. He took off his shoes and put his bare feet against the back of the seat in front of him. When the flight attendant approached, he got into a verbal fight and grabbed her by the arm. Police detained the passenger when the flight landed.

Beijing

Fire from smoking in bed

A woman accidently set fire to her apartment in the Dongcheng district while smoking in bed on Wednesday, the Beijing Times reports. She said she was ill and didn’t notice the burning smell until smoke was rising from her sheet. She fled and called firefighters, who put out the fire before it spread to other flats.

Guangdong

Woman’s throat slit

A 17-year-old migrant worker from Shenzhen died after a man attacked her and slit her throat with a knife on Tuesday night, Guangdong Television reports. She was walking home with her aunt after work when the assailant suddenly grabbed her by the neck. The aunt said she ran to a busy road to find help and when she returned the victim was lying in a pool of blood. She was pronounced dead at the scene. Surveillance video showed the attacker had been following them since the victim left work. The police are investigating.

Shopper sets fire to store

An irate man burned down a department store in Dongguan on Thursday because he couldn’t return items he had purchased several month ago, the Southern Metropolis News reports. The arsonist broke in through the back door of the Guoqin Department Store, and security guards said he threatened them with a knife. He set fire to clothes and towels on the first floor, they said. The blaze engulfed the second floor and neighbouring stores. It took more than 100 firefighters seven hours to extinguish the blaze. The man was arrested by the police at the scene.

Hebei

Sex service scam

A couple from Shijiangzhuang was arrested on Thursday for allegedly swindled 30 men out of a total of 50,000 yuan (HK$63,160) they paid in advance for sex, the Yanzhao Evening News reports. Victims said they received leaflets offering the service and when they called the number listed were told to deposit money into a bank account, after which a sex worker would contact them. After making the transfer, nothing happened and repeated calls to the number were ignored. The police raided the couple’s apartment and seized stacks of leaflets and 27 bank cards. The couple said they expected the victims wouldn’t contact the authorities out of fear their families would find out.

Hunan

Trucker drives with torch

A truck driver was busted by the traffic police for using a torch to illuminate the Zhanghua Highway at night because all his headlights were broken, Changsha Evening News reports. Police stopped the truck, which was travelling at about 20km/h in the early hours of Wednesday. The driver said he had failed to fix the headlights and decided to use the flashlight because he was racing a delivery deadline. The truck was loaded with a shipment of firecrackers. The driver was fined and the case handed over to the local police.

Persistence pays off

A man from Zhuzhou won 8.29 million yuan on Thursday using his “lucky” numbers – the birth date of a family member, news website Voc.com.cn reports. The man had played the same set of numbers for a decade and said persistence was the key.

Jiangxi

Marriage status fee

A man in Duchang county expressed surprise when the local civil affairs bureau charged him 20 yuan to print out his personal details proving he was single, news website Jxnews.com.cn reports. The bureau said the fee had been approved by the commodity price bureau. Cities including Nanchang and Jiujiang have waived the fee for issuing such information.

Student goes missing

Police are searching for a student at Nanchang Hangkong University who has been missing since Monday, news website Jxnews.com.cn reports. The student was last seen leaving his dormitory wearing slippers on his way out to dinner. His roommates looked for him the next day at an internet café where he often spent the night and when he wasn’t there, they contacted the authorities. Surveillance video showed he left the campus at around 5pm. The police discovered he has failed several courses and were investigating.

Shaanxi

Two male flight attendants got into a row with the owner of a restaurant in Yulin after one of them ripped their pants on a nail in a chair, Shaanxi Television reports. They told the owner they were air traffic police and demanded 2,700 yuan in compensation. When he offered them only 1,000 yuan, they tried to steal a bottle of Chinese liquor. Police were called and the flight attendants threatened to file complaint with the officers’ supervisors if they missed their flight. They were both detained.

Sichuan

Principal hurts pupil

The headmaster of a primary school in Rong County was sacked after he scratched a pupil’s face with a pen, the Chengdu Business Herald reports. The principal said he had received complaints the boy was being noisy in his dorm at night and used the pen to poke his face as a warning. He didn’t realise the cap was off, and scratched the pupil’s face. His parents were given 8,000 yuan in compensation.

Jail for imposter

A woman from Chengdu has been sentenced to 14½ years in jail for posing as the wife of a senior executive at Wuliangye, a famous Chinese liquor company, and swindling more than 10 people out of 1.4 million yuan, news site Scol.com.cn reports. The woman sought bribes in exchange for posts at the company and deals to buy the liquor at a discounted price. Investigators also discovered she had swindled two men from Hebei of 21,900 yuan in March.

 

[Pfizer]

For China’s anti-corruption crackdown, Fridays and weekends are good days for big news

PUBLISHED : Thursday, 18 December, 2014, 5:06pm
UPDATED : Thursday, 18 December, 2014, 5:13pm

Staff reporter

The end of the internal inquiry into the former security tsar Zhou Yongkang was officially announced on the stroke on midnight on the first Saturday of this month. Photo: Reuters

For the past two years it has been accepted – almost as a rule of thumb – among China’s media and interested mainlanders that Fridays and weekends are the likely time for senior officials to fall from grace over allegations of corruption.

Yet few observers could tell why – until now.

People have described the pattern as “Mondays for flies, Weekends for tigers” ever since President Xi Jinping launched his anti-graft campaign against both low-level officials and those in the most senior roles.

Indeed, as midnight struck to mark the first Saturday of this month, the Communist Party announced the conclusion of its internal inquiry into the former security tsar Zhou Yongkang, with the case officially handed over to prosecutors.

Former deputy national police chief Li Dongsheng, former Jiangxi party chief Su Rong, and former Hainan deputy governor Ji Wenlin are among the “tigers” to have appeared on the anti-graft agency website late in the week.

Now the party’s top anti-graft agency has candidly revealed that Friday and weekends are officially good days for revealing big news about corrupt senior officials.

The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) admitted that part of a deliberate strategy to attract maximum attention to its relaunched website involves it being used to regularly announce news of major corruption cases at the same time during the week.

A television programme, co-produced with state television, and broadcast last night, said the CCDI was using its relaunched website as a way to engage the public in its on-going anti-graft campaign.

During the past few months the CCDI has also developed new features to attract users to the website, including a page where potential informants can report cases of possible corruption, or reveal clues about the whereabouts of corrupt officials that have fled abroad along with huge sums of stolen money and other valuables.

There are exceptions to the rule about when big news is revealed, however. It was announced on a Thursday in February that Jin Daoming, a former vice-chairman of Shanxi’s provincial legislature, was being investigated over corruption.

 

[Pfizer]

Chinese police chief who let off drink-driving son charged with corruption

PUBLISHED : Thursday, 18 December, 2014, 3:26pm
UPDATED : Thursday, 18 December, 2014, 3:28pm

Reuters in Beijing

Li Yali was the senior police officer in the Chinese city of Taiyuan until last year, when footage of his son’s drunken violence went viral on the internet. Photo: SCMP Pictures

The former police chief of a major city in northern China has been charged with corruption after being sacked for allowing his drink-driving son, who attacked a policeman, to be set free, state media reported

Li Yali was the top police officer of Taiyuan – a city in Shanxi province, about 500km southwest of Beijing – until last year, when footage of his son’s drunken violence went viral on the internet.

His son, Li Zhengyuan, was stopped on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol in October 2012.

Li Zhengyuan, who was found to be drunk at the wheel of his car, then attacked one of the police officers, who then walked him home instead of arresting him, state media said.

A Communist Party investigation found Li Yali had abused his power while handling his son’s case.

He has now been arrested and charged with accepting bribes, Xinhua, the state news agency, reported.

It gave no other details of the charges facing Li, who could not be contacted for comment.

Abuse of power, particularly by officials covering up the crimes of family members, strikes a particularly raw nerve in China owing to widespread concern about how widespread the problem is in a country with little concept of the rule of law.

President Xi Jinping has vowed to go after the corrupt and improve the legal system as he tries to restore faith in the ruling Communist Party after a series of cases involving high-profile corruption and abuse of power that have angered the public.

This month the government announced the arrest of former public security chief Zhou Yongkang, one of China’s most powerful politicians of the past decade.

He has been accused of leaking state secrets as well as accepting bribes and the case is now in the hands of prosecutors.

 

[Pfizer]

Beijing Zoo boss who put 8 million yuan fortune down to part-time taxi driving is jailed for life for corruption

PUBLISHED : Friday, 19 December, 2014, 2:11pm
UPDATED : Friday, 19 December, 2014, 7:02pm

Nectar Gan
[email protected]

Xiao Shaoxiang was jailed for life today after being found guilty of corruption, including taking bribes and “possessing huge assets of unknown origin”. Photo: Xinhua

The former deputy chief of China’s Beijing Zoo – who claimed his 8 million yuan (about HK$10 million) fortune was earned from part-time jobs, including working as a taxi driver – was sentenced to life imprisonment by a Beijing court this morning.

The Beijing Second Intermediate People’s Court found Xiao Shaoxiang guilty of corruption, including taking bribes and “possessing huge assets of unknown origin”.

All his personal property would be confiscated, the Beijing-based newspaper, Mirror, reported on its official mainland microblogging Weibo website.

Prosecutors said six million yuan in cash, paintings and gold bullion from unknown sources were found in Xiao’s apartment – a cache worth a total of 8 million yuan, the court said during his trial in August.

He was charged with accepting bribes totalling more than 140 million yuan.

Xiao, 59, had denied all the charges during the trial.

He had defended himself by claiming that he had earned the money from moonlighting as an unlicensed cab driver after work at the zoo from 1991 to 1994.

“During the day I rented the car to a construction company, and went out to carry passengers at night,” he told the court.

“I earned 50,000 [yuan] a year, and earned more than 200,000 [yuan] in total.”

Xiao said his other moonlighting activities included selling stones and artworks, as well as helping part-time on construction projects, which provided him an income of several million yuan.

“I worked overtime every day, and didn’t rest at weekends or on public holidays,” he told the court.

Xiao also told the court that all the assets had come from “legitimate income”. He claimed his wealth could be traced to a combination of sources, including his salary and also loans from relatives.

“All the money [came from] my payroll, investment income and a part of it was borrowed from relatives,” Xiao told the court.

However, he failed to provide evidence for his defence. “[It has been] so many years; the IOUs were all lost,” Xiao said.

While working as deputy director of Beijing Zoo, Xiao also served as director of the Beijing Taoranting Park and was in charge of the zoo’s reconstruction project between 2006 and 2008.

Prosecutors said Xiao took more than 10 million yuan in project funds and placed it in a company under his name. They said he had also kept 100,000 yuan in bribes from the construction companies.

Xiao said in his defence that the construction projects were completed up to very high standards, despite him skimming money from the budget.

He had been detained by Beijing police last March.

 

[IBelieve]

Around the nation: Restaurant owner fined after fake wine leaves diners ill and in poor spirits

Also, woman tries to sell son to save sick daughter, and bra thief's perverse deed exposed

PUBLISHED : Sunday, 21 December, 2014, 8:32pm
UPDATED : Sunday, 21 December, 2014, 10:02pm

Policemen inspect seized bottles of fake wine. A Jiangxi restaurant owner was made to compensate a diner after he sold the man counterfeit liquor. Photo: Reuters

ANHUI

Family poisoned

A family of six from Linquan county, including a three-year-old girl, have been diagnosed with thallium poisoning, The Beijing Times reports. The family started feeling sick and losing hair after having dinner together late last month. They reported the matter to the police, saying they had suffered similar symptoms in August but thought it was just a bad case of food poisoning. The matter is currently under investigation. Compounds containing thallium, a metallic element sometimes used in rat poison, are colourless, odourless and tasteless, but highly toxic.

Killer on the run

Police in Haozhou city have launched a manhunt for a 30-year-old man suspected of killing the principal of a local kindergarten, Anhuinews.com reports. The man has been at large since July after he robbed the kindergarten at night and stabbed the principal to death.

BEIJING

Building blast

Four people died after an explosion in a residential building in Changping district on Saturday, The Beijing Times reports. The blast occurred at a second-floor apartment at 3.33pm and the resulting blaze quickly spread to several apartments above the flat. Firefighters put out the fire within the hour. More than 20 households were evacuated from the building, and electricity and water supplies to their flats were also cut. The cause of the explosion is being investigated.

6,200 busted online

Beijing police detained more than 6,200 people between June and November in a crackdown against online crime, the Beijing Youth Daily reports. Beijing’s Public Security Bureau launched the campaign about six months ago, in an effort to combat crime on the internet, maintain cybersecurity and clean up undesirable online content. Those arrested included 607 people involved in terror-related offences, but the report gave no further details on those offences.

GUANGXI

Bra thief exposed

A man in Yulin city who stole more than 2,000 bras and sets of underpants over the past year has been caught, Gxnews.com.cn reports. The man, who had broken into several of his neighbours’ apartments in the building where he lived, stole only women’s lingerie. He was uncovered when the false ceiling above which he hid his loot gave way from the weight of the underclothes.

Bribes for projects

A former director of the water resources bureau in Xingbin district, Laibin city, has been sentenced to 11 years in prison for accepting 600,000 yuan (HK$757,000) of bribes from a local developer, Gxnews.com.cn reports. In return for the bribes, the corrupt official offered the developer several reservoir projects between 2009 and 2013.

HEILONGJIANG

Official commits suicide

The deputy chief of Nangang district committed suicide by hanging himself early on Thursday morning, People.com.cn reports. Xing Chunlin, 54, died of mental problems, the authorities said, declining to offer further details. Xing joins a growing list of Chinese officials who have taken their own lives in recent months, a trend that some researchers suspect may be linked to the ongoing anti-corruption campaign launched last year.

Festival on ice

The 31st Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival will begin on January 5 and run for a month, Hljnews.cn reports. The annual festival features ice sculptures, an ice lantern display and a swimming race in the frozen Songhua River.

HENAN

Rescue-centre rejection

The head of a government rescue centre in Xinyang city has been suspended for investigations after a 17-year-old boy whom he turned away was later found dead, Henan Business Daily reports. The teenager, He Zhengguo, was admitted to the rescue centre earlier this month but was turned away and sent to a psychiatric hospital instead just hours later. He was found dead in the hospital a few days later.

Embezzler jailed

A former director of the real estate management bureau in Erqi district, Zhengzhou, has been sentenced to 25 years’ jail for embezzling more than 37 million yuan of public funds and taking 200,000 yuan in bribes between 2002 and 2010, Dahe.cn reports. Zhai Zhenfeng’s crimes had delayed the building of a large number of apartments meant to house low-income residents, the court said. Zhai’s family owns 29 apartments in Henan and Shanghai, mainland media reported.

JIANGXI

Rail link on the way

Construction started on Saturday for a high-speed railway track linking three key urban cities across Jiangxi province, Jxnews.com.cn reports. The 420km railway line – linking Nanchang, Jichang and Ganzhou, is expected to be completed by 2019. The 53.2 billion yuan project will cut the travel time between Nanchang and Ganzhou from four hours to just two.

Sickening spirit

A restaurant owner in Xinyu city has been ordered by a court to compensate a customer 25,600 yuan for selling him four bottles of fake liquor, Jxnews.com.cn reports. The customer had bought four bottles of the Wuliangye wine, at 1,080 yuan each, while entertaining friends at the restaurant. Those who drank the liquor thought it tasted strange and three developed rashes and had difficulty breathing. The three were taken to hospital.

SHANDONG

‘Sell son’, save daughter

A woman in her 30s took to a street in Taidong city on Saturday to “sell her son” in order to afford treatment for the boy’s twin sister who is ill, Iqilu.com reports. The woman said she was hoping to draw public attention to her family’s plight after they spent all their savings on treatment for their three-year-old daughter, who was diagnosed with an acute form of leukaemia in August.

Oil thief slips up

A 33-year-old man has been arrested in Jinan for stealing diesel oil from trucks by cutting the vehicles’ oil pipelines, Sdnews.com.cn reports. After stealing the diesel oil from the trucks, the man then sold it to others at 3 yuan per litre – only about half of the market price of the oil.

SHANGHAI

Project planetarium

Construction will start next year on Shanghai’s new planetarium – the largest of its kind in the world – in Lingang New City and is expected to be completed in 2018, Chinanews.com reports. The 58,600 sq m planetarium – the size of eight football fields – will feature domes and curved lines to resemble the orbits of the moon and the earth. The report did not say how much the building would cost.

Retired official detained

A retired senior official in Shanghai has been taken away for serious violations of party disciplines and laws, Eastday.com reports. Jiang Xiefu, 71, was party head of Baoshan district before he retired. He once served as deputy director of the city’s agricultural commission and Fengxian district party secretary, and was elected as a lawmaker in 2003. The authorities gave no further details on his case.

 

[Citrix]

Thousands arrested in porn, gambling crackdown

Xinhua, December 22, 2014

Police in South China's Guangdong province said Sunday they captured more than 30,000 suspects in a two-month crackdown on porn and gambling.

As of Dec 15, the province arrested 3,014 people and more than 5,000 others were put under criminal detention in the campaign, said the Guangdong Provincial Public Security Department.

In one case, police busted an online gambling gang in Huizhou City on Nov 24. The gambling activities involved funds totaling 30 million yuan.

Police said they will continue to crack down on the illegal activities to prevent them from rebounding.

Earlier this year, police in the province captured 3,033 suspects in a prostitution crackdown launched after a February media exposure of sex services offered at hotels in the city of Dongguan, which is notorious for its illegal sex trade.

 

[Citrix]

Mini spies in the classroom strain relations

Shanghai Daily, December 22, 2014

Education has long involved monitoring the activities of students. Now there is a new twist. Parents are equipping young children with surveillance gadgets to snoop on teachers in the classroom.

A smart watch sold on jd.com

The trend, say educational specialists, could further strain parent-teacher relations.

Snap-on-the-wrist smart watches enabling remotely controlled dialing or voice recording are easy enough to find on retail platforms like taobao.com and jd.com, China's leading e-commerce websites.

Staff at one primary school in Shanghai were astonished to discover that "more than a few" first and second graders were wearing monitoring devices, local newspaper Wenhui Daily reported recently.

The report cited one instance when a parent "leaked" to other parents information a teacher had given to a class before the students had even brought the news home. The parent later admitted to eavesdropping via a child's smart watch.

Some teachers have coined a phrase for such snoopy people. They call them "monster parents," borrowing the term from a popular Japanese TV series.

Carla Zhu, a Shanghai mother, bought a smart watch for her 3-year-old kindergarten pupil son last month from Taobao. It cost about 400 yuan (US$60).

"If you send a command through an app installed on your phone, the watch will immediately respond and dial your number," Zhu explained.

Zhu said she was prompted to buy the surveillance gadget because she was concerned about her son being maltreated after seeing angry kindergarten teachers harshly scolding children late for school at the entrance gate.

"The teachers usually report positive things about my boy, but he sometimes tells me he feels unhappy at school," Zhu said. "He's too young to understand it all or express himself clearly, so I want to know what really happens to him at the kindergarten."

Prices of snoop gadgets range from 200-800 yuan, which makes them affordable for typical families. Media reports about incidents of classroom abuse have boosted sales.

Kicking children

In November, a parent in the northeastern city of Shenyang told local media that a recorder placed in her young child's pencil box picked up unwarranted teacher insults to a class of first-grade pupils.

This month, a surreptitious video was uploaded anonymously online, showing a kindergarten teacher violently kicking children in the legs during outdoor exercise. A subsequent investigation confirmed the teacher had kicked children who refused to dance to the music.

Many teachers have expressed opposition to their young charges snooping on them.

"No teacher would put up with something like that," said a primary school teacher surnamed Cai, who declined to give her full name, and said she had never come across any such surveillance devices in her 21 years of teaching. "It's a privacy issue. Nobody enjoys being the subject of eavesdropping."

Yu Zhiyuan, a lawyer at DeBund Law Offices, said the gadgets don't infringe on teacher privacy in legal terms.

"Teaching students in a classroom is different from making a private phone call in the office," Zhu explained.

But he conceded that surveillance gadgets could disrupt the classroom environment by making teachers nervous and unnecessarily on guard.

Schools could take legal action against parents whose children use the gadgets, he added, but that would only further poison relations and ultimately harm the young children involved.

"Some parents nowadays nitpick and make a fuss about anything they don't like about their children's teachers," said Ye Linjuan, Shanghai mother of a 5-year-old daughter in kindergarten.

"It's important for them to learn to trust. Children with parents prone to distrusting others won't learn how to develop trust in their lives. That would be very sad for society."

Overly protective

Some parents have even enrolled their children in exclusive kindergartens with real-time closed-circuit cameras installed in the classroom.

Li Xiaowen, a psychology professor at East China Normal University, said too many parents nowadays are overly protective of their children.

"Traditionally, Chinese education philosophy believes that scoldings from teachers, where appropriate, are good for children, but now even the slightest reprimand gets exaggerated by media and parents," he said.

"Teachers need to be respected, and parents need to understand that they are not always wiser," added Li.

 

[Pfizer]

Acquitted Chinese man compensated after 16 years in prison

Xinhua, December 25, 2014

A Chinese man who was acquitted in a retrial after being imprisoned for 16 years received state compensation of 1.57 million yuan (256,000 U.S. dollars) on Wednesday.

Personnel of the Guangdong Provincial Higher People's Court handed over the compensation document to Xu Hui and made an apology to him.

Zhuhai Intermediate People's Court sentenced Xu to death with a two-year reprieve in May 2001 for the rape and murder of a 19-year-old girl in 1998. He appealed against the verdict many times without success.

In 2007, the Supreme People's Procuratorate ordered a review of Xu's case saying an error was possible.

Due to inadequate evidence, Xu was acquitted in a retrial by Zhuhai Intermediate People's Court in September this year.

In another case, a couple in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on Monday announced that they would seek state compensation for the wrongful conviction and execution of their son in 1996 in a rape and murder case.

 

[Pfizer]

Around the nation: Funeral hall blocks road

PUBLISHED : Saturday, 27 December, 2014, 1:39am
UPDATED : Saturday, 27 December, 2014, 1:39am

It will be more difficult to buy a car in Beijing from next year when a quota on new petrol-fuelled vehicles is cut from 130,000 cars to 120,000. Photo: Xinhua

Beijing

Car quota cut

It will be more difficult to buy a car in the capital from next year when a quota on new petrol-fuelled vehicles is cut from 130,000 cars to 120,000, the Beijing Times reports. But the quota for new-energy cars will be increased next year.

Bittersweet IOU victory

An angry woman threw paper money at her boyfriend inside a Beijing court after he was ordered to pay 200,000 yuan (HK$252,000) to settle a lawsuit - rather than 3.5 million yuan he had promised in a written IOU, the Beijing Times reports. The man, who refused to divorce his wife for his former university classmate, promised the girlfriend the money if she had an abortion, then told her husband about their affair. She sued him for full payment of the IOU, according to the report.

Hunan

Jail for bus menace

A man who almost caused a bus to overturn when he tried to sit on the steering wheel during a row with the driver as the vehicle was moving, has been jailed for four years by a Longhui county court, Xinhua reports. The man, who was found guilty of endangering public safety, started to argue with the driver and conductor in July after he started smoking on a trip from Shenzhen.

Funeral hall blocks road

Villagers holding a funeral in Wanbao township halted traffic yesterday on the provincial highway after blocking the road with a temporary memorial hall made of bamboo, Xinhua reports. Loudi traffic police ordered villagers to clear the road after drivers were asked to make a detour.

Guangdong

Pool death liability

Guangzhou's Huadu district court ordered a property management company to pay compensation of 370,000 yuan to the parents of a boy, aged five, who drowned in a swimming pool at a residential development in 2012, the Southern Metropolis News reports. The parents sued the firm, which had no business licence or on-site medical staff. The court ruled the firm was half to blame for the boy's death after his uncle left him playing by the pool when he went to the toilet, the report said.

Warning on beggars

Huizhou's social welfare department has warned the public not to give money to beggars after discovering a man claiming to be a cripple earned 200 yuan each morning, the Southern Metropolis News reports. He admitted deception when welfare staff took him to its centre, where he walked into the canteen to have lunch.

Jiangsu

Last-minute jackpot

A delivery driver who won a 110 million yuan jackpot in a national sports lottery said he had no idea what to buy with the money, Xinhua Daily reports. The man, who pocketed 9.35 million yuan, after paying tax on his winnings, said he bought one ticket - using his usual numbers - six minutes before sales ended.

Dream price 'a mistake'

A man in Nanjing who bought a 1.7 million yuan BMW from a dealership online for 170,000 yuan, after spotting the internet offer, was told the next day the deal had been cancelled, the Jiangnan Times reports. He was sent a text next day saying it was only a down payment. The company said a staff member had made a mistake and would refund the money. But the Nanjing Consumers' Rights Association said the deal could not be cancelled.

Shaanxi

Refund on exam fines

A high school in Dali county was ordered to return a 362 yuan fine imposed on students who did badly in an exam on Monday, the Beijing News reports. The class committee had decided that students who got less than a set number of marks in each exam should be fined two yuan for every lost mark, with the money going to the top-scoring students.

Official denies corruption

Xu Jianlong, a former chief of the Hancheng Land and Natural Resources Bureau, has denied embezzling 500,000 yuan in 2011 and accepting 100,000 yuan in bribes in 2012, the Huashang Daily reports. At his corruption trial in Weinan , Xu said he confessed only because of the tough treatment he received during the investigation. The court is yet to hand down a verdict.

Shanghai

Two hurt in escalator fall

Two women in their 50s were injured when an escalator on a bridge in Huaihaizhong Road suddenly sped up - then stopped - on Christmas Eve, the Shanghai Morning Post reports. The women suffered injuries to their arms, legs and torsos. All escalators serving the bridge have been shut while an examination is carried out.

Vocational grads 'best'

The more than 95 per cent of university and vocational school graduates are in work - with those leaving vocational school having the better success in finding employment, the Shanghai Morning Post reports. Of nearly 170,000 new graduates up to August, those that studied manufacturing-related subjects found it easiest to find a job. Law and social sciences graduates found it most difficult to secure work.

Sichuan

Long arm of the real law

A couple who took bribes from construction sites and motels while pretending to be senior uniformed police officers, were caught in Nanchong - by an eagle-eyed real policeman, the West China City Daily reports. The policeman became suspicious when he saw they were not dressed in winter uniforms.

Early Christmas delivery

A 17-year-old woman, unaware she was pregnant, gave birth to a healthy boy one month premature yesterday morning as she walked to hospital to see doctors about her "severe stomach pains", Newssc.org reports. Street cleaners found her lying in the street in pain and offered her a blanket.

Zhejiang

Small revenge

A man repaid a 420,000 yuan bank loan in small change when the bank pressured him to repay the money despite earlier agreeing to a delay, the Qianjiang Evening News reports. The man was due to pay the loan 10 days ago, but the bank agreed for him to first pay 300,000 yuan, and the rest, plus interest, by January 15. After the bank kept pressuring him, he changed the money into coins and notes no larger than 5 yuan. It took 16 tellers at the bank more than six hours to count all the money on Christmas Eve, the report said.

Lucky river crash escape

Six people, including two children, escaped uninjured after a woman in Jiashan county drove her car into a river after using the accelerator instead of the brake on Wednesday, the Qianjiang Evening News reports. Passers-by helped an elderly woman and a girl swim the shore, while the others stood on the submerged car until they were rescued, the report said.

 

[Pfizer]

HIV patients hired to ‘intimidate’ people out of homes in Henan province

Henan developer arrested and accused of paying infected people to intimidate residents into relocating to make way for real estate project

PUBLISHED : Friday, 26 December, 2014, 2:04pm
UPDATED : Saturday, 27 December, 2014, 1:31am

He Huifeng and Li Jing

A building in Nanyang with "AIDS demolition team" daubed on the walls. Photo: SCMP Pictures

A man has been detained in Nanyang , Henan province, for allegedly hiring six HIV carriers to intimidate residents into moving out to make way for a real estate project.

More than 10 households left the residential community in Wolong district after the group left threatening messages on building walls, yelled at residents and set off firecrackers at night, The Beijing News reported.

The HIV carriers told residents that the developer had paid them a total of 300,000 yuan (HK$378,000) to force the residents to move out, and that they used the money for medical treatment, the newspaper said.

The city government said on its website that it had launched an investigation into the matter and that the company in charge of demolishing the area had been told to stop work.

It stressed that the Wolong district government was not responsible for hiring the HIV carriers or the intimidation of the residents.

But a commentary posted on Xinhua's website said the local government could not be absolved because it had played a major role in pushing the relocation and demolition programmes.

The district government wanted to relocate the residential community as part of a project to "renovate urban villages" - meaning that they wanted to demolish villages on the outskirts of cities that were surrounded by more modern buildings.

"Local governments were behind most of the bloody demolition incidents that have occurred in recent years," the Xinhua commentary said.

"They would commission the relocation work to private companies or real estate developers, who would then hire hooligans to force the residents to move out … How can the local government then say that it has nothing to do with the case?"

This was not the first time that HIV carriers in Henan had been hired to intimidate people, local police said. A separate Beijing News report said the practice had been widespread in the province for about a decade.

Henan was hard hit by an Aids epidemic in the 1990s, when villagers from poor rural communities in the province contracted the disease after they took part in blood-selling schemes.

Such patients were hired to collect debts or for extortion in Henan and elsewhere, including Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. They were paid a few hundred yuan a day for their services.

A policeman in Nanyang, who did not want to be identified, said the carriers would show their victims blood-filled syringes and medical documents certifying them as HIV-positive.

He said it was difficult for the public security authorities to deal with HIV and Aids patients even if they were convicted of crimes because there were no special facilities to house such people if they were jailed.

 

[flickr]

4 officials under probe for bribery

Xinhua, December 26, 2014

Four Chinese officials are being investigated for allegedly accepting bribes, according to a statement released on Friday by the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP).

They include Zhao Huanguang, former Party chief of North China Air Traffic Management Bureau of Civil Aviation Administration of China, and Liu Qingtao, former deputy general manager of Sinopec Oilfield Service Corporation.

Prosecutors in northeast China's Liaoning Province have been tasked with investigating them, the SPP said.

The other two suspects are Jiang Ming, former Party chief of Lishui district committee in Nanjing, capital city of east China's Jiangsu Province, and Zhang Yusheng, former director of an energy industry development department of the China International Engineering Consulting Corporation.

According to the SPP, investigations into the two have been assigned to prosecutors in Jiangsu and north China's Hebei Province.

 

[tonychat]

"
"No teacher would put up with something like that," said a primary school teacher surnamed Cai, who declined to give her full name, and said she had never come across any such surveillance devices in her 21 years of teaching. "It's a privacy issue. Nobody enjoys being the subject of eavesdropping."

This month, a surreptitious video was uploaded anonymously online, showing a kindergarten teacher violently kicking children in the legs during outdoor exercise. A subsequent investigation confirmed the teacher had kicked children who refused to dance to the music.

[/COLOR]

if you have nothing to hide, for fuck you scare to let people see..

chink shit behaviour should be monitored...you bunch of chink losers are 3rd world...get it? But of course PAP are worst!!!

 

[xlszvscx]

chill man..........

 

[Pfizer]

Louis Vuitton belt brings down Chinese official

Source:Xinhua Published: 2014-12-27 14:55:59

An official in central China's Hunan Province was placed under judicial investigation after a photo of him wearing a Louis Vuitton belt went viral on social media, local authorities said on Saturday.

Users of Weibo, China's Twitter-like microblogging website, lambasted the state-owned Rucheng County water and electricity company general manager, Li Jianguo, and questioned how he could afford such an extravagant accessory.

The online brouhaha was brought to the attention of the local Communist Party of China (CPC) discipline watchdog, which responded by reviewing Li's finances.

The watchdog said it suspected Li had broken the law and violated Party regulations.

Other high profile officials have faced public scrutiny following the posting of photographs featuring them with luxury watches or even cigarettes on social media.

 

[Revenge]

Policeman in China suspended after 'assaulting woman who later died'

Officer said the woman was ‘playing dead’ after alleged assault in Taiyuan in northern China

PUBLISHED : Monday, 29 December, 2014, 2:59pm
UPDATED : Monday, 29 December, 2014, 4:00pm

Li Jing
[email protected]

The police officer stands over Zhou Xiuyun after she collapsed. Photo: SCMP Pictures

A police officer from Shanxi province in northern China has been suspended after he allegedly assaulted a 47-year-old woman who died just hours later, state media reported.

A video of the officer treading on the woman’s hair as she lay on the ground has gone viral on the internet.

The woman’s 21-year-old son had gone to a construction site in Taiyuan with three colleagues earlier this month, complaining that their wages were late, Xinhua reported.

The man’s parents also went to the building site to find out what was happening.

One police officer allegedly grabbed the mother’s hair and twisted her neck, while the father was beaten by other officers, according to their son.

He said his mother, Zhou Xiuyun, then lay on the ground for one hour, during which the police officer trod on her hair and accused her of “playing dead”, Xinhua reported.

The husband, who had three ribs broken in his beating, said he asked police officers to take care of her as he had been handcuffed and could not move.

He was not aware that she may have lost consciousness or even have already died, he told the news agency.

The woman was formally declared dead three hours later.

An duty officer at the local police bureau spoke to Xinhua and rejected reports, claiming that no officers would have committed the reported abuse "in public".

The woman’s relatives have demanded a full autopsy and inquiry into the cause of her death.

 

[flickr]

'Kidnapping' for love

Chinadaily, December 29, 2014

It's understandable that some men try fancy approaches, such as dancing in snow half-naked or arranging iPhones in heart shape, to pay court to their beloved, but in this story an ex-boyfriend went too far.

The man from Central China's Henan province was determined to save his relationship after his fiancée decided to break up with him. Wearing a mask, he kidnapped the girl at her home and made a phone call to himself to demand a ransom of 20,000 yuan ($3,218). He later returned with his face mask off, clothes changed and a knife scar in his arm, which he claimed he sustained when the "kidnapper" attacked him when he went to pay the ransom at the "rendezvous".

But the kidnap-and-rescue trick did not fool the police, and he was detained on kidnapping charges.