Pianist appeals

    A Chinese student who was sentenced to death for murdering a woman to cover up the fact that he had accidentally run into her with his car had appealed* the verdict*, a Xi’an court said on Thursday.

    Yao Jiaxin, 21, a student at the Xi’an Conservatory of Music, was proven guilty of murdering Zhang Miao, the mother of a 2-year-old boy, in Xi’an City, capital of Shaanxi last October to prevent her from reporting the accident to the police.

    City GDP

    Shenzhen fell behind a Jiangsu city to rank No. 5 in GDP growth in the first quarter this year, statistics showed.

    Shenzhen’s GDP grew 10.8 percent in the past three months, reaching 235 billion yuan (US$36.15 billion). The growth rate was lower than Suzhou in Jiangsu Province, where GDP grew to 237 billion yuan during the same period. It was the second time in a year Suzhou had overtaken* Shenzhen to be the nation’s fourth-largest economy.

    SZ ex-mayor

    A court in Central China’s Henan Province on Monday sentenced former Shenzhen mayor Xu Zongheng to death, suspended* for two years, for taking bribes.

    The Intermediate People’s Court in Zhengzhou, capital of Henan, found that Xu, 56, accepted more than 33.18 million yuan (US$5.1 million) in bribes between 2001 and 2009 when he served in several high-ranking government positions in Shenzhen.

    New Metro plan

    Shenzhen will start building five new Metro lines in September after a plan for the third phase of the Shenzhen Metro network has been approved by the Central Government.

    The new Metro lines 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, which run about 170 kilometers with 95 stations in total, are scheduled to be completed by 2016 at an estimated cost of 80 billion yuan (US$12 billion). Upon completion, the total length of the city Metro network will be 348 kilometers.

    (SD-Agencies)