Advertisement
Advertisement

China Digest, March 4, 2013

A woman has been acquitted of charges that she stole books and statues from the home of Ji Xianlin, a famed linguist and professor of Peking University, a few months after his death in 2009, Qianlong.com reports. 

STAFF

A woman has been acquitted of charges that she stole books and statues from the home of Ji Xianlin, a famed linguist and professor of Peking University, a few months after his death in 2009, Qianlong.com reports. Following Ji's wishes, she moved some belongings from his apartment to the university. But his son claimed that the items, valued at more than 3.3 million yuan, belonged to him. The court sided with the woman.

The owner of a printing plant in Tongzhou district has been sentenced to one year in jail and fined 10,000 yuan for illegally printing thousands of books valued at more than 13 million yuan, the reports. The man was caught in July and all of the books were confiscated.

The former driver of a corrupt party chief in a Shenzhen sub-district has been sentenced to three years in jail for helping his boss hide millions of yuan, the reports. Liu Shaoxiong, the former party chief of the Shajing sub-district in Nanshan district, received a two-year suspended death sentence for taking nearly 20 million yuan from a crime syndicate in exchange for protecting its members. Liu deposited most of the money into his driver's bank account.

A 21-year-old migrant worker from Gansu has been arrested by Shenzhen police for allegedly killing two people last month, the reports. The man quarrelled with a friend over a 400-yuan charge for an online game they played together on February 8. When the victim's girlfriend came home before the killer had time to clean up the scene, she was killed too.

Five people died and three others were injured when a minivan plunged into a 100-metre-deep ravine shortly before noon on Saturday, Xinhua reports. The eight people on board included an eight-month-old, who survived along with two others, as the three were thrown from the vehicle before it stopped. The vehicle was heading to Xingyi city on a mountain road.

Xingyi officials Saturday refuted an online rumour that a local restaurant was serving monkey meat to tourists, China News Service reports. The government said investigators team went to the restaurant on Friday and confiscated five macaque monkeys illegally being kept there, but the monkeys were used only to entertain guests.

A two-year-old boy was found on Saturday in Wuan city after more than 50,000 internet users circulated a photo of him since Thursday, the reports. The boy's mother posted his photo on Thursday night saying he went missing the day before in Zhengzhou, Henan, about 270 kilometres away. Police found the boy at a bus station in Wuan and identified him with the circulated picture. It was unclear how he got there.

Twelve people died from carbon monoxide poisoning in a coal mine fire in Huailai county, Zhangjiakou , on Thursday, and another worker was still missing, Xinhua reports. The accident happened while the 13 workers were doing maintenance work in the mine.

A 33-year-old man has been caught by police in Zhengzhou for sexually assaulting five young girls in several villages under the city's Xushui township between September and January, the reports. Police said the case was hard to crack because the victims were aged four to nine.

A truck driver was detained in Zhengzhou after hitting and killing a 51-year-old sanitation worker who was cleaning a traffic fence down the middle of Zhongzhou Road, the reports. It was the third incident since November in which local sanitation workers were hit while working on roads. Two of the workers died.

A 26-year-old man was executed in Wuhan yesterday for setting off a bomb in front of a bank in a robbery attempt on December 1, 2011, resulting in two deaths and 15 injuries, the reports. After detonating the bomb, the man decided not to rob the bank, and he sped off on a motorcycle. He was caught two weeks later. He learned online how to make the explosives.

About 140,000 couples wed in Wuhan last year, and the average ceremony cost more than 130,000 yuan, the reports. According to official statistics, the total cost was nearly five times the annual income of an average Wuhan resident.

More than 130 police officers in Changzhou received measles jabs with vaccines that had expired for months ago, China News Service reports. Local parents whose children recently received the vaccine were afraid they were also given some of the expired batch, which could be ineffective at preventing the disease.

Education officials in Jianye district, Nanjing , have set a 1,500-yuan monthly cap for tuition fees at all kindergartens in the district, the reports. Kindergartens will also receive financial support from the district government.

More than 7,000 students took a university entrance exam for art majors at the Shanghai Theatre Academy on Saturday, vying for just 45 spots, the reports. A further 6,000 students will sit a similar exam this week, competing for 36 other spots at the academy.

Three men from Shanghai, aged between 25 and 30, have been arrested for kidnapping a 27-year-old woman on Thursday and holding her for ransom, the reports. The victim was stopped as she drove out of a car park around 2pm. Her kidnappers dragged her out of the car and locked her up in their hideout. She was rescued about 10 hours later.

The families of eight miners who died on Friday in a gas explosion in Zhenxiong county, Zhaotong, will each receive 818,000 yuan in compensation, Yunnan.cn reports. The accident happened around 2pm, but the mine owner didn't report it until 9.30pm. Police detained five people, including the owner and the mine manager.

A forest fire that started on Friday in Shilin county and affected more than five hectares of woods was brought under control after about 17 hours, with the help of more than 900 people, Yunnan.cn reports. The fire occurred about 40 kilometres from Shilin's famous Stone Forest - parts of which are Unesco heritage sites. Persistent drought has led to several forest fires across the province in the past month.
Post