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."
In a market in the Chadian capital, N’Djamena, customers flock to Ache Moussa’s stall to have their long plaits smeared with a special paste in an age-old ritual. Each strand of hair, from the root to the end, is slathered in a traditional mixture of cherry seeds, cloves and chebe seeds, the most important ingredient of all. Users say the recipe makes their hair grow longer and more lustrous. Local and natural hair products are gaining popularity across Africa as people turn away from commercial cosmetics. Moussa applies the mixture and shapes the client’s locks into a gourone — a traditional hairstyle consisting of
The US yesterday wrapped up its first multidomain exercise with Japan and South Korea in the East China Sea, a step forward in Washington’s efforts to enhance and lock in its security partnerships with key Asian allies in the face of growing threats from North Korea and China. The three-day Freedom Edge increased the sophistication of previous exercises with simultaneous air and naval drills geared toward improving joint ballistic-missile defense, anti-submarine warfare, surveillance and other skills and capabilities. The exercise, which is expected to expand in years to come, was also intended to improve the countries’ abilities to share missile warnings —
‘ONE FELL SWOOP’: Overturning a landmark ruling that said judges should defer to experts would ‘cause a massive shock to the legal system,’ a dissenting opinion said Prosecutors overstepped in charging Jan. 6, 2021, rioters with obstruction for trying to prevent certification of the 2020 presidential election, the US Supreme Court said on Friday, throwing hundreds of cases into doubt, while another controversial ruling struck down 40 years of legal precedent on federal agencies’ ability to regulate critical issues. The matter was brought to the court through an appeal by former police officer Joseph Fischer, a supporter of former US president Donald Trump who entered the Capitol with hundreds of others in 2021. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said prosecutors’ interpretation of the law would “criminalize
‘APOCALYPTIC : An UN official said that Lebanon was ‘the flashpoint beyond all flashpoints,’ and a conflict that involved it would draw in Syria and other nations Israel on Wednesday said that it does not want war in Lebanon, but could send its neighbor “back to the Stone Age.” The border between the two countries has seen daily exchanges of fire between Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants since the attack on Israel by Hezbollah’s ally Hamas on Oct. 7 last year, which triggered the war in Gaza. Fears those exchanges could escalate have grown in the past few weeks as cross-border attacks intensified and after Israel revealed it had approved plans for a Lebanon offensive, prompting new threats from Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah. Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant said