Police have arrested a man suspected of killing at least 25 high school students in central China over a two-year period, after luring them from Internet cafes and electronic gaming halls to his home in central Henan province, officials and Internet Web sites said yesterday.
Police in Pingyu County arrested the suspected killer Huang Yong, 29, on Nov. 12 after a 16-year-old boy who he had kidnapped escaped his home in Dahuangzhuang village, the official Henan News Net said on its Web site.
The boy reported his Nov. 7 kidnapping to police who arrested Huang, the report said.
After police found 18 bodies buried behind Huang's house, the suspected killer confessed to strangling 25 victims, it said.
Police in Pingyu County and in Dahuangzhuang village refused to confirm Huang's arrest or comment on the case, but a local official in Yuhuangmiao Township confirmed that Huang had been arrested and was being charged with murder.
Huang's arrest comes after police in neighboring Hebei Province arrested Wang Ganggang on Nov 2, as the leading suspect in what could be China's largest-ever serial murder case.
Wang, also a native of Henan Province, is suspected to have killed at least 65 people in Henan and neighboring, Hebei, Shandong and Anhui provinces, Xinhua news agency reported Friday on its Web site.
Central authorities appear to have placed a gag order on both murder cases, as information has only appeared on Web sites and not in Chinese dailies.
Refusals by officials and police to discuss the cases also appear to reflect official reluctance to comment on such extreme crimes until after they have solved them.
The parents of 13 missing boys had already set up a self-help group seeking the whereabouts of their missing children and had urged police to better patrol Internet cafes and gaming halls in the region.
Huang allegedly lured the boys to his home with offers of employment, then tied them up and strangled them with a rope, the report said.
The 16-year old boy, identified as Zhang Liang, was allegedly tortured by Huang, who choked the boy three times until he passed out, but did not kill him.
Mass murders have become increasingly common in China, due to what observers believe is a result of the country's rapidly changing socio-economic fabric which has seen a widening gap between the rich and poor, increased psychological stress on people and increasing mobility.
On Friday police said a Chinese man had confessed to raping at least 37 elderly women, some of them in their 90s, because he said they were "easy to control."
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
ECONOMIC DISTORTION? The US commerce secretary’s remarks echoed Elon Musk’s arguments that spending by the government does not create value for the economy US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Sunday said that government spending could be separated from GDP reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.” Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the US economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because
RSS