SHANGHAI: China’s top judge has said the ruling Communist Party’s decision to investigate former senior leader Zhou Yongkang demonstrates clearly that no party member is above the law, the semi-official China News Service reported.
The investigation “fully illustrates that in socialist China no power exists outside the cage of the system, and party members will never be allowed outside party discipline and national laws,” Zhou Qiang, president of the Supreme People’s Court, was quoted as saying on Tuesday.
The party announced on July 29 that it had launched a corruption investigation into former domestic security chief Zhou Yongkang, who was one of China’s most influential politicians of the past decade and stood on the elite Politburo Standing Committee.
Zhou Yongkang, 71, is by far the highest-profile figure caught up in President Xi Jinping’s sweeping crackdown on corruption and the most senior Chinese official to be ensnared in a graft scandal since the party swept to power in 1949.
Japan mudslide death toll 70
TOKYO: A week after huge landslides swamped the Japanese city of Hiroshima, the confirmed death toll from the tragedy hit 70 yesterday, with 18 people still missing.
Few hopes remain for those unaccounted for, although the fluctuating number -- which has risen and fallen sometimes independently of the number of dead -- has left confusion as to the disaster’s likely final cost in human lives.
More than a month’s rain fell in just three hours last yesterday morning, triggering devastating mudslides on hillside communities in the western city.
Dozens of homes were buried or carried away when tons of earth, rocks and debris smashed into settlements at a reported 40 kilometres per hour.
At its height, the recovery operation involved more than 3,000 police, firefighters and soldiers.
One of their number -- a 53-year-old rescuer -- was swept to his death during the first frantic efforts last week, when a secondary landslide crashed through the area where he was working.
Agencies
