Asia, Bo Xilai | featured news

Gu Kailai, the wife of the disgraced political leader Bo Xilai, has been indicted for intentional homicide, in a crime that has triggered China’s most serious political crisis in decades. The official Xinhua news agency on Thursday evening published a brief dispatch announcing that Ms. Gu and an aide employed by the family had been formally charged in the poisoning death of the Briton, Neil Heywood, 41, whose body was found last November in a hotel in Chongqing, the sprawling municipality Mr. Bo led until his downfall.

Cambodia’s Foreign Ministry had no plans to extradite Patrick Devillers, a French architect with links to disgraced Chinese politician, Bo Xilai, and his wife, but was not setting him free either.

Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi sued a Hong Kong newspaper after it claimed she earned millions of dollars from having sex with top Communist Party leaders... The newspaper alleged she earned around $110 million from prostituting herself.

Information about a Chinese policeman who implicated the wife of a top Chinese official in a British businessman's murder was not circulated widely in Washington as he was considered of marginal intelligence value, current and former U.S. officials said.

The Chinese politician who launched an attack on organised crime is accused of heading a police apparatus that carried out "evil" operations against its enemies. Bo Xilai spearheaded a crackdown on Chongqing's mafia organisations, but people are now coming forward claiming this involved torture and false accusations.

The central Communist Party is attempting to dismantle the support network of Bo Xilai, the former party chief in Chongqing and to build a case against him and his wife.

China has moved quickly to cast the downfall of one of the country's top politicians as a simple case of legal wrongdoing. Bo Xilai has been stripped of his position in the Communist party's politburo because of his connection with the suspected murder of British businessman Neil Heywood.

The British businessman whose murder has sparked political upheaval in China was poisoned after he threatened to expose a plan by a Chinese leader's wife to move money abroad, two sources with knowledge of the police investigation said.

With China’s propaganda apparatus in overdrive as the Communist Party demolishes the reputation of one of its former stars, a few defiant and angry fans are sticking to their guns. “We support the Chongqing Model and Bo Xilai,” declared a call to arms posted on the Web site of the Progress Society, a pugnacious “new left” fraternity that trumpets the ousted Chongqing Party boss as a hero. Its logo features a panda wearing a Mao cap and clutching a rifle in front of a Chinese flag.

China’s Communist machine on Wednesday launched a coordinated chorus of approval of the decision to oust fallen top official Bo Xilai and arrest his wife in a murder probe, likely an effort to stave off criticism from the disgraced politician’s many supporters.