China sentenced a former high-ranking provincial official to 20 years in prison for corruption, while former Chinese deputy minister of public security Li Dongsheng (李東生) went on trial for corruption, reports said, the fourth and fifth allies of former Chinese security boss Zhou Yongkang (周永康) punished this week.
Former Sichuan Province vice governor Guo Yongxiang (郭永祥) had accepted a total of more than 43 million yuan (US$6.8 million) in bribes, the Yichang Intermediate People’s Court said on Tuesday.
Guo’s “personal and family assets and expenditures clearly exceeded his and his family’s legal income,” it said on a verified social media account.
Guo was previously an aide to Zhou, the former head of China’s domestic security apparatus and the highest-ranking Chinese Communist Party official to have fallen in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) much-publicized anti-graft campaign.
The investigation into Guo was an early sign that China was targeting Zhou in a crackdown that some have described as a political purge.
Sichuan was one of Zhou’s powerbases, as was China’s oil industry, in which Guo worked for 26 years.
Separately, Li went on trial for corruption yesterday, state media reported.
Li was accused of abuse of power and accepting nearly 22 million yuan, Xinhua news agency reported, citing the Tianjin Second Intermediate People’s Court.
Three other former oil men with ties to the security czar have been jailed this week, including Jiang Jiemin (蔣潔敏), the former head of the body that oversees China’s top state-owned companies, who was sentenced to 16 years.
The other two were Li Chuncheng (李春城), a former senior official in Sichuan Province, who was sentenced to 12 years in prison, and Wang Yongchun (王永春), a former top oil executive, who was given 20 years on Tuesday.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
IN PURSUIT: Israel’s defense minister said the revenge attacks by Israeli settlers would make it difficult for security forces to find those responsible for the 14-year-old’s death Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday condemned the “heinous murder” of an Israeli teenager in the occupied West Bank as attacks on Palestinian villages intensified following news of his death. After Benjamin Achimeir, 14, was reported missing near Ramallah on Friday, hundreds of Jewish settlers backed by Israeli forces raided nearby Palestinian villages, torching vehicles and homes, leaving at least one villager dead and dozens wounded. The attacks escalated in several villages on Saturday after Achimeir’s body was found near the Malachi Hashalom outpost. Agence France-Presse correspondents saw smoke rising from burned houses and fields. Mayor Amin Abu Alyah, of the