A middle-aged woman in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, miraculously survived a 15-floor death plunge on Monday and is now in hospital for treatment for serious injuries. The 50-plus woman Wu jumped out of a 15th floor window in a suicide bid but her fall was broken by laundry line brackets on the 3rd and 8th floors. She finally landed on a protruding rain-proof shelf on the first floor. Police and a medical team rushed to the spot and sent her to hospital for emergency treatment. Doctors said Wu was still not out of danger.
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Source: Yangtze Evening News
A publishing house in Henan Province recently wrote a letter to a kindergarten boy in Jinan, Shandong Province thanking him for correcting a geography mistake in a book. The 6-year-old bought a World Book six months ago and spent long hours studying the location of each and every country. In May, Kang Hangwen found that the location of the Czech Republic in the book differed from that on a globe. After close scrutiny, Kang figured the book should have marked the place as Belgium. Kang wrote to the publishing house to draw their attention to the mistake. They then sent Kang a set of fairy tales as a token of their appreciation.
Source: Qilu Evening News
Fire broke out on a moving train in a tunnel in the west of Hong Kong yesterday morning, forcing evacuation of about 650 passengers. The incident occurred inside the Tai Lam tunnel in the New Territories shortly after 9am as the train was heading from Tin Shui Wai to Mei Foo station in the west of the New Territories. Smoke reportedly poured out of one of the carriages of the train. Evacuation took about 30 minutes in the dark tunnel. Four men and five women felt sick and were sent to a hospital nearby. The Environment, Transport and Works Bureau has ordered the Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation to submit a report. The bureau has also asked the corporation to check power-supply equipment of all trains of the same model. The Rail Inspectorate is investigating the cause of the incident and will ensure that the incident was not caused by failure of equipment inside the tunnel before allowing resumption of West Rail service at Tai Lam Tunnel section. Initial investigations blame the fire on an oil leak from a transformer on the rooftop of the affected carriage, the corporation said.
Source: xinhuanet.com
Four patrol police officers in north China have been sentenced to up to four years in prison, after being convicted of using violence while seriously injuring the victim during questioning. The emergency command headquarters of Laiyuan County in Baoding City, Hebei Province, received a report on March 14 last year, saying a man was stealing a car on the county's Xiangyang Street, the Yanzhao Metropolis Daily reported yesterday. About 3am, the county public security bureau sent four patrolmen to the scene, the Hebei-based newspaper said. The four officers were identified by pseudonyms, Liu Shan, Cao Wei, Sun Ming and Liu Hua. Arriving at the spot, the four saw a man seated in the driver's seat of a Xiali-brand car, identified as the stolen taxi. They opened the car door, demanding the man surnamed Sun get off. But he didn't respond. The officers pulled Sun out of the car by force. Although they repeatedly questioned him, Sun still didn't respond. Then, the four officers began to beat or kick him. Liu was found to use a rubber club to hit Sun's head. Besides the injuries in the head, Sun also suffered from contusions throughout his body, from the beating. Legal medical experts who examined Sun found he was seriously injured. The county's court found Sun sat in the taxi and declined to leave, because he was drunk. Last September, the court sentenced Liu Shan to four years in prison. Liu appealed after the verdict, which was later reaffirmed. Cao was sentenced to two years in jail, with a reprieve of three years. The other two received a one-year sentence for each, with two years' reprieve. The Laiyuan public security bureau has paid 150,000 yuan (US$18,750) to Sun as compensation.
Source: Shanghai Daily
China has taken the death penalty off the table as it negotiates with Canada over the extradition of the chief suspect in its most notorious smuggling and bribery scandal. If found guilty by a Chinese court, Lai Changxing would not be executed, Gan Yisheng, secretary-general of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China, said yesterday. Prosecutors allege that Lai, 53, ran a Xiamen-based criminal ring that smuggled as much as US$10 billion worth of goods under the protection of corrupt government officials. Authorities described the case as the biggest smuggling operation uncovered in China since 1949. Lai, his wife and their three children fled to Canada in 1999 and began a bid for refugee status, which has been denied. Canada's Federal Court is considering whether to grant China's request that Lai be returned for trial. When Lai's lawyer raised concerns about possible mistreatment in China, Gan noted that the country has signed an international convention banning torture. China respects the dignity of those who confess their crimes, and it protects their rights, Gan said. As a result of investigations into Lai's alleged wrongdoing, more than 30 people have turned themselves in, including some who returned from overseas areas, Gan said. Among them, Lai Changtu, Lai Changxing's brother, was sentenced to 15 years in prison. If he hadn't surrendered, he could have received the death penalty. More than 100 people involved in the smuggling and bribery case have been sentenced to life in prison and other periods of confinement, Gan said. All 19 people who were given life sentences have received term reductions, he said. Gan noted that Lai has been in Canada for more seven years and has not been able to convince authorities that he's a legitimate refugee. "There is an old expression in Chinese: 'The sea of bitterness has no bounds; repent and the shore is at hand,"' Gan told reporters at a news conference. "We advise Lai Changxing: Do not obstinately stick to the wrong course. The sensible choice is to make up your mind as soon as possible, come back and give yourself up, " he added.
Source: Shanghai Daily
Three foreign three-color wolves that were discovered pregnant in December will deliver in the Changsha Zoo, in the capital of Hunan Province, after Spring Festival. The female wolves, whose coats are three colors, have been isolated from tourists. The gestation period for wolves is usually between 69 and 72 days. A special delivery room has also been built in the zoo. It will be the first time the foreign wolves have given birth in the zoo. The Changsha Zoo imported 10 such wolves from Africa last April. They adapted to local conditions quickly.
Source: Changsha Evening News
CHINA has closed 205 Websites in a crackdown on video, music and software piracy, authorities said yesterday. Investigators checked out 436 reports of intellectual property theft between the end of September and January - including 130 complaints from overseas industry associations - and ordered 361 offenders to halt their activities. They also handed out fines totaling hundreds of thousands of yuan and confiscated servers and other equipment. "Piracy of intellectual property on the Internet has seriously harmed the interests of copyright owners, leading to a large number of disputes and disrupting order on the Internet," Yan Xiaohong, deputy director of the National Copyright Administration, told a news conference in Beijing yesterday. Authorities imposed fines totaling 705,000 yuan (US$91,000), confiscated 71 servers and transferred six cases to prosecutors for court action, Yan said. One has already led to a conviction, he added. The overseas complaints came from the Motion Picture Association, the International Federation of Phonographic Industry and the Business Software Alliance, Yan said. "China treats domestic and foreign copyright holders equally, without discrimination," Yan said. "The administration will prosecute all proven cases of intellectual property infringement." A Chinese regulation that bans uploading or downloading Internet material without the permission of the copyright holder went into effect last July. Prominent cases included sites that offered downloads of software, textbooks, music and television shows. In one case, all the Internet cafes in Changchun in northeast China's Jilin Province were found to be linked to a database of pirated films. One Website in southern China's Sichuan Province was found to have provided illegal downloads of 400 movies since it was set up in 2004. Authorities closed the site and fined its operator, Sichuan Telecom, 10,000 yuan. Sichuan Telecom is a subsidiary of the state-run China Telecom Group. "This latest action had a limited time frame and limited results," Yan acknowledged. "It did not solve all the problems we are facing on the Internet." China is home to about 843,000 Websites and 140 million Internet users, making it the world's second-biggest Internet market. The Internet penetration rate in China has developed at lightning speed in recent years. The country's online population is expected to overtake the United States as the world's largest in about two years. About 210 million of the America's 300 million people are online, according to the US government. China currently has 137 million people online. Yan said there are 843,000 Chinese Websites at present.
Source: Shanghai Daily
A Shandong court has sentenced a woman to two years of public surveillance for describing a woman as her father's mistress with foul language though articles on the Internet, a local newspaper reported today. Wang Jing, a student of Jinan University, established an anti-mistress Website on June 18 to denounce the woman her father was supposedly having an affair with. In the previous two years, Wang went to the Central Disciplinary Commission of the Communist Party of China in Beijing twice to report her father, a member of the CPC, for keeping a mistress. Her story was widely reported by China media. Even China Central TV interviewed Wang. Li Cuilian, the so-called "mistress" sued Wang in Dingtao County, Shandong Province on August 14 with a charge of two crimes — insult and defamation. Wang said her father secretly kept Li as mistress from 2003. However, Wang couldn't provide any direct evidence to support her claim, the report quoted the court as saying. Wang argued that she had a lot of circumstantial evidence. Wang's parents divorced in 2005, but Wang published her father's affair on the Internet in June. Wang also used some improper words on the Website to describe Li, which was considered as an insult to Li by the court. The court found Wang guilty of insult and ordered her to take down the Website in five days after the sentence taking into effect. Wang was entitled to appeal within 10 days after receiving the sentences on Monday, according to criminal procedure law of China.
Source: Shanghai Daily
A man shot five people to death - including a 12-year-old boy - and wounded a police officer before killing himself in northeast China's Jilin Province Monday morning. The dispute apparently was the result of a longstanding business grudge that turned violent. It ended in a series of methodical murders and a police chase into the mountains, where the alleged killer ended his life. The 47-year-old gunman was identified only by his surname, Zhang. The victims included Zhang's former wife, a friend, the father of his ex-business partner and the young boy. The gunfire began around 10am in Guoqing Village in the city of Liaoyuan City, the City Evening News said reported. Hearing gunshots, more than 10 villagers rushed to the home of Ye Chengfa. Witnesses said Zhang shot 68-year-old Ye and his 60-year-old wife to death with a homemade pistol. Ye was killed at the door of his house, while trying to resist the assault with a wooden pole, a villager surnamed Li told the newspaper. Zhang then aimed his weapon at the gathering crowd shouting, "Get out of my way if don't want to die." The villagers fled to Li's house and called police. But the violence continued. Zhang walked over to several children and asked them to identify Ye Chao - Ye Chengfa's grandson. The villagers saw Zhang drive away the other children and take 12-year-old Ye Chao to his grandfather's house. A gunshot sounded, and the boy was later found dead. Zhang also fired at police officers who arrived at the home, leaving one with a minor leg injury. As more officers arrived, Zhang fled to the mountains behind the village. He was cornered about halfway up and shot himself in the head as officers closed in, authorities said. Police said Zhang killed his ex-wife and a friend surnamed Yang before going to Ye's house. Officers said he shot Yang because the man refused to drive Zhang to Ye's house on his motorcycle. Investigators said they believed Zhang was motivated by a conflict with Ye Chengfa's son, Ye Wen. The two had cooperated in a deal to sell silica to a local factory, but the partnership broke up and led to a lawsuit, which Zhang lost. Police also said a bomb was found in front of the factory's manager. It was removed without incident. Also on Monday, a man killed his hostage and then committed suicide in an apartment in Shishi City, Fujian Province. The unidentified man had kidnapped a 30-year-old woman surnamed Wang, owner of a hardware store, and tried to extort money from her family.
Source: Shanghai Daily
A retired professor at Tsinghua University and renowned expert on solar energy was given a suspended three-year jail term yesterday on embezzlement charges. Xue Zuqing, 69, transferred more than one million yuan (US$128,500) from a fund in the Tsinghua Solar Co Ltd, a state-owned enterprise where he worked as general manager, to his wife's bank account in August 2002, the Haidian People's Court in Beijing heard. His sister used the money to pay for a new apartment. The company, jointly set up by Tsinghua University and a Beijing glass factory, established the fund by selling 20 percent of its stock to a solar energy research institute in Shandong Province in 1999. Xue recovered the money in September 2003, after he was dismissed as general manager in March the same year. The court gave him a five-year reprieve for his cooperation in the investigation and for returning the money. Xue was an acknowledged expert in the solar energy industry and an inventor of all-glass evacuated collector technology, which has become widely used in the solar energy industry.
Source: xinhuanet.com
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