Disgraced party leader Bo Xilai has been charged with numerous crimes related to the death of British businessman Neil Heywood, and has been dismissed from the Chinese Communist Party for his actions.
Part of the reason Gu Kailai wasn't sent directly to death row after being found guilty Monday in the death of Briton Neil Heywood was that he reportedly threatened her son, something his family in Britain has never denied publicly.
Shortly before Gu Kailai, the wife of disgraced Chinese politician Bo Xilai, was sentenced to a suspended death sentence on Monday, The Financial Times became the latest news organization to entertain the theory that the woman shown in the trial (above left) wasn't Gu, but a look-alike.
Gu Kailai, the wife of disgraced Chinese politician Bo Xilai, was spared the death penalty on Monday after being found guilty of murdering a British business man.
When Gu Kailai's murder trial ended after just seven hours on Thursday, the same-day stories still carried very few details about the crime, but now, thanks to leaks from the courtroom, we finally have a narrative, and it's juicy.
An interesting detail surfaced amid the reporting Friday that the murder trial for Gu Kailai (at right), the wife of disgraced politician Bo Xilai, would start next week: She's not expected to get the death penalty to which she's exposed under law.
After the wife of disgraced Chinese politician Bo Xilai was arrested for murder on Thursday, the state is getting ready for its highest profile criminal case in years, and while it really wants to project an image of fairness, nobody's buying it.
The Bo Xilai political scandal is officially a crime story now, as his wife, Gu Kailai, has been charged with murder.
As The New York Times Andrew Jacobs reports, there's one gigantic drawback to being one of China's lucky, power-wielding officials: Any misstep could land you in the shuanggui, a system of secret torture complexes complete with simulated drowning, cigarette burns, and sleep-deprivation.
Bill Clinton reviewed the new Robert Caro book for The New York Times, the Fox News mole is shopping a book that Fox-bashers will adore, and the giant hedge fund that sponsors the Man Booker Prize is having a bad run of luck.
The latest piece to fall into place in the Bo Xilai scandal is a big one: The former Chongqing Communist Party secretary apparently wiretapped Chinese President Hu Jintao, which goes a long way toward explaining why the party came down so hard on Bo.
This week's hot scoops in the Bo Xilai scandal come from The Telegraph, on the China side, reporting that Bo's wife Gu Kailai confessed to murdering Neil Heywood, and from The Harvard Crimson, on the Western side, which got a statement from Bo's son, Bo Guagua.
China's worried enough about the information going out on the U.S.-based Chinese language site Boxun.com that it apparently took the trouble to knock the site offline, so now we're going to add Boxun to our list of sites worth reading about the Bo Xilai scandal.
If you've been following the Bo Xilai scandal, you've probably noticed some remarkably vague language surrounding key parts of the narrative, but this week much of it is becoming more specific, including what happened at the U.S. consulate where Bo Xilai's chief of police fled in February.
The whole Bo Xilai scandal has been something of an object lesson on how not to act when you're part of China's power structure, and as the focus moves to Bo's son, Bo Guagua, that becomes even clearer for the college set.
In today's tour of propaganda, Kim Jong Un gives a winning smile, Chinese media does damage control, and Anders Breivik sobs after watching his own propaganda film.
Reuters' scoop revealing a possible motive in the alleged killing of Brit Neil Heywood in China also offers a glimpse of how difficult reporting can be in a nation where information is so tightly controlled by the government.
As the official Chinese press rushes to condemn disgraced Communist Party official Bo Xilai, the official party newspaper sounds like it's coming perilously close to doing actual investigative work into political corruption -- a potentially dangerous pursuit.
Tuesday was a bad day for Chinese politician Bo Xilai and his family: First Bo was suspended from the 25-member Politburo that runs China, then his wife was reportedly arrested for the murder of a British businessman.
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