Crime

A Chinese court is retrying the case of a woman who was tortured to death by her husband and in-laws because she could not get pregnant.  People criticized the “disproportionately light” punishment after the father-in-law was sentenced to three years in prison, the mother-in-law for 26 months and the husband got two years.  This sentencing came after the court heard that the family had abused Fang Yangyang for seven months before she died on January 31, 2019 at the age of 22. Fang died from serious injuries and malnutrition.  She had spent seven months in an ordeal of severe beatings, starvation, confinement and even being forced to stand outside for extended periods of time in frigid winter

All seems quiet now at the home surrounded by a three-meter hedge in an expensive neighborhood of South Surrey in Vancouver. But on June 17, the $2.2 million mansion was a hive of activity. Police cruisers were parked in the driveway alongside two Maseratis. Yellow caution tape blocked the entrances as officers came and went. At 5.30 am that day, 41-year-old Chinese immigrant Bo Fan had been dropped off outside the nearby Peace Arch Hospital. She was gravely injured – police have not described exactly how – and she died a few hours later. The investigation into the mysterious murder of Bo Fan has cast a spotlight on a Chinese-origin spiritual group called Create Abundance – also known as Gol

A man who was kidnapped as a child has been reunited with his parents after 32 years, bringing an end to one of China’s most notorious abduction cases. Mao Yin was two in 1988 when he disappeared in Xian, the capital of the northern province of Shaanxi, and was sold to another family who raised him as their own son. Mao, who was renamed Gu Ningning by his adoptive parents, was reunited with his mother and father – Li Jingzhi and Mao Zhenjing – on Monday at a press conference organized by the police and shown live on the state broadcaster CCTV. Mao, who now runs a home decoration business, was tracked down in early May by Xian police. They used facial recognition technology to analyze old ch

A man in northwest China has been detained after his 79-year-old mother was buried alive. The woman, who was partially paralyzed, was rescued after three days and is in a stable condition in a hospital in Shaanxi province, police said. Prosecutors in Jingbian county said the woman’s son, a 58-year-old identified only by his surname Ma, had been charged with attempted murder. On Tuesday his wife told local police that Ma had taken the bedridden woman named Wang away on a cart and she had not returned home. Police said the man had confessed to burying her in the woods and she was rescued later that day. “Ma was there when police were digging up the two-meter deep grave. He didn’t say anything

Zhang Yingying was 26 years old when she left China for the US as a visiting scholar to study climate change on crop yields in mid-2017. Just six weeks after she arrived in a new country, with its unfamiliar culture and language, Zhang disappeared, never to be seen again. In June that year, police arrested a former physics PhD candidate, Brendt Christensen, after surveillance footage showed that Zhang had entered a car driven by him. A jury later found him guilty of murder and he was sentenced to life in a federal prison. Prosecutors said he raped her and murdered her using a baseball bat and a knife. Zhang’s disappearance sent shockwaves through Chinese students in the US. Before Christense

Chen Xiaobai, a graphic designer from Changsha city in southern China’s Hunan province, has been running a WeChat messaging group since the beginning of February called The Victims of Online Masks Fraud. The group has attracted about 170 members, all of whom had been cheated out of money while trying to buy face masks online to protect themselves or other people from the spread of the novel coronavirus. Online fraud has a long history, but fears about the coronavirus outbreak and a shortage of masks have brought swindlers a fresh pool of potential victims among China’s 800 million internet users. With the demand for masks far exceeding the supply many have no choice but to turn to private c

A Chinese man was sentenced to death over the weekend for fatally stabbing two officials at a roadblock set up to contain the spread of the coronavirus in early February. A court in the southwestern province of Yunnan handed down the death sentence to 23-year-old Ma Jianguo on Sunday for the stabbings, which occurred on February 6. In a statement, the Intermediate People’s Court in Honghe Hani and Yi Autonomous Prefecture said: “Ma ignored national laws when Yunnan was at the most critical stage of a public health emergency. [He] ignored virus control policies, leading to the serious consequence of two lives being taken away. Such behavior is considered intentional murder.” Ma was traveling

Sometime in the middle of 2017, Hong Kong businessman Wong Muk-nam disappeared without a trace. The 62-year-old owned a plastic trading factory in Guangdong, according to a friend who lives in the southern Chinese province but refused to reveal his name. “We were chatting on WeChat, but suddenly he was out of reach,” he recalled. “No responses to messages, phone calls. It was really unusual because he always responded quickly.” Then Wong’s name turned up as a key suspect in an international syndicate smuggling pangolin scales and ivory from Africa. According to mainland court documents, Wong and his associates smuggled at least three shipments of more than 4.4 ton of pangolin scales worth $

The last thing Shanghai man Tony Qian expected while walking with his wife on grassland below the 28-floor residential buildings of their community was to be hit by a falling piece of dog excrement. And yet, as he looked up to see where the foul missile had come from, he saw a tissue fluttering to the ground which, on closer inspection, was stained with the same muck which had struck him on the shoulder. Qian was lucky. There have been numerous reports in recent years of critical injuries and deaths caused by people flinging dangerous items – including a bicycle, stroller and even a kitchen knife – from their high-rise windows. But his efforts to bring the poo perpetrator to justice went now

A man who killed a Chinese millionaire before chopping him into 108 pieces has been found not guilty of the businessman’s murder, after a judge ruled that the intent to kill had not been proved. British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Terence Schultes instead found Zhao Li, 59, guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter, as well as interfering with human remains. Outside the court on Tuesday, Zhao’s lawyer Ian Donaldson praised the ruling and said his client was a “completely normal” man, whose actions on May 2, 2015, were considered “unthinkable” by those who knew him. Zhao, an experienced hunter, did not dispute having shot dead Yuan Gang, 42, with a rifle in the driveway of his Vancouver