Society

A Chinese court sentenced a junk dealer to death Monday for murdering eight people, among them a widow who jilted him and her 2-year-old grandson slain with an ax, state media reported.

The Intermediate People's Court in the central city of Suizhou ordered Xiong Zhenlin be put to death after a half-day trial, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

Previous Xinhua accounts said that Xiong, a 32-year-old junkyard owner, had confessed to the killings after he was arrested Jan. 11. All death penaltiesSupreme People's Court in Beijing before being carried out. are supposed to be reviewed by the

Xiong had wanted to marry 43-year-old Zhu Deqing, but after she refused, he killed her and the boy at their home in Luoyang town, outside Suizhou. Police said their head wounds suggested that the killer used an ax.

Police discovered six other bodies — three men and three women — after searching Xiong's junkyard. The six, between the ages of 45 and 69, were employees at his salvage operation, but it wasn't clear when they had been killed. Investigators found bloodstained axes and hammers on the premises.

Although private gun ownership is virtually banned, violent crimes have become more common in China in recent years, including scattered cases of revenge attacks.

As a folk art which listed as state intangible cultural heritage last year, Fire Meteor is very popular in Taiyuan, Shanxi province since Jin dynasty.

Fire Meteor integrates local acrobatics with traditional martial art. It disappeared around 1970's for some reason, now local folks recover it and play it during the festival of lanterns.

Days before China's human rights record comes under scrutiny before a key U.N. panel, the government's grip on dissent seems as firm as ever.

Government critics have been rounded up and some imprisoned on vaguely defined state security charges. Corruption whistle-blowers have been bundled away, while discussion of sensitive political and social topics on the Internet remains tightly policed.

On Friday, officers stationed outside a government building in Beijing took away at least eight people — members of a loosely organized group of 30 who had traveled to the capital from around the country, seeking redress for various problems, almost all of them involving local corruption.

One member of the group, Li Fengxian, a gray-haired woman from the central province of Henan, held up a sign with the character for "injustice" painted on it.

Li, 65, said she has spent years fighting officials in her village who she claimed give away a poverty allowance allotted to her family to other officials.

The police response underscores the government's determination to keep control over a fast-changing society — even in the face of a U.N. meeting to examine China's human rights record.

The review by the U.N. Human Rights Council, which begins Monday, is part of a new process that evaluates member countries in an effort to prompt improvements and address violations. The council, which replaced the discredited U.N. Human Rights Commission, has no enforcement powers, but is supposed to act as the world's moral conscience on human rights.

Following the review, the three-nation working group composed of Canada, India, and Nigeria will submit a report of their findings.

The stakes are high for China, one of five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, which wants to be seen as a responsible player in the international community. At the same time, the Communist leadership is worried about its grip on power slipping as the economic downturn and rising unemployment threaten to aggravate social unrest.

Authorities are especially sensitive this year, the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests and the subsequent military crackdown. On Thursday, four months before the anniversary, two events commemorating a milestone modern Chinese art exhibition whose iconoclastic spirit fed into the rebellious mood of the times were shut down.

China will divert water from its two longest rivers to help farmers hit by the country's worst drought in decades, state media said Sunday.

Water from the Yangtze River, the country's longest, will be diverted to the northern areas of eastern Jiangsu Province, the Xinhua news agency reported, citing Zhang Zhitong, a senior Ministry of Water Resources emergency official.

The announcement came after Beijing last week raised its drought emergency to the highest level for the first time and sent relief supplies and technical specialists to eight major drought-hit regions.

Floodgates will also be opened in Inner Mongolia along the Yellow River, the country's second longest river, to increase water supply for central Henan and eastern Shandong provinces, Zhang according to the report.

China has released more than five billion cubic meters (177 cubic feet) of water from the Yellow River to fight the drought that has hit most of its north since November, Xinhua said.

The drought is also affecting central and southwestern rice-growing provinces.

More than 4.3 million people and 2.1 million head of livestock are short of water, the relief headquarters said this week, as parts of the nation experience their worst drought since the early 1950s.

About 43 percent of the country's winter wheat supplies are at risk, as some areas have seen no rain for 100 days or more, state media said previously.

The dry spell highlights one of China's main long-term worries, as water resources are being rapidly depleted due to the country's fast economic growth.

The capital, Beijing, is particularly badly hit, with experts warning the city of 17 million people will soon face water shortages.