Police in southwest China have detained a man suspected of murdering more than a dozen boys and young men, chopping up their bodies and selling the flesh to unsuspecting consumers, reports said yesterday.
Zhang Yongming, 56, was detained two weeks ago in Nanmen Village in Yunnan Province and is being investigated over the murder of a 19-year-old man late last month, the Guangxi News Web site reported.
MISSING VILLAGERS
Police searching Zhang’s home found the young man’s cellphone, bank card and other evidence, according to the Web site, which said more than a dozen other teenagers had gone missing from the village over the years.
It said Zhang had previously served almost 20 years in jail for murder.
Zhang was known in the village as the “cannibal monster,” the site reported, quoting residents as saying they had seen green plastic bags hanging from his home, with what appeared to be white bones protruding from the top.
Local police declined comment when contacted yesterday, saying information would be made available “at an appropriate time,” and other reports on the gruesome case appeared to have been removed from Chinese Web sites.
However, Hong Kong newspaper the Standard yesterday said that police entering Zhang’s home discovered human eyeballs preserved inside wine bottles and pieces of what appeared to be human flesh hanging in the house to dry.
‘OSTRICH MEAT’
Police feared that Zhang had fed human flesh to his three dogs, while selling other parts on the market, calling it “ostrich meat,” according to the Standard.
Beijing has dispatched a team of experts to Yunnan to supervise the investigation into the missing teenagers and two local police chiefs have been dismissed from their positions, Xinhua news agency said.
Families of the missing suspected that they had been kidnapped and forced to work in illegal brick kilns, Xinhua said, adding that the government had called for a swift resolution to the case.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia