Li Mingzhu, a flight attendant from Zhengzhou, Henan Province, was allegedly killed by a driver named Liu Zhenhua who offered her a ride via the Hitch service on China’s biggest car-hailing app, Didi Chuxing, on May 5. According to Li’s father, Li had hailed Liu’s car just before midnight to take her home from the airport, but she never arrived. Police found Li’s body dumped in wasteland. She was allegedly raped before being stabbed to death. Liu was identified as a major suspect, but his body was found in a local river several days later. He is suspected of killing Li before committing suicide. According to media reports, Liu’s driving license had been revoked, and he had used his father’s license to register with Didi Chuxing. He was also reported to have taken medication for long-term depression. The lapses in security triggered wide public concern over the security of online cab-hailing services which are often criticized for poor vetting of their drivers.
A pilot on the flight deck of a Sichuan Airlines plane en route from Chong-qing to Lhasa had a lucky escape after he was partially sucked out of the windshield when it shattered at an altitude of 9,800 meters. His seatbelt saved him, and he was pulled back inside. As well as the sudden cabin depressurization, temperatures in the cockpit plunged, and the flight’s captain, former flight instructor Captain Liu Chuanjian, had to wrestle with the controls for 20 minutes to land the plane manually at Chengdu. No passengers were injured during the incident. Liu, who has flown the route for 10 years, has received much praise from the public and from fellow aviation workers. Others have urged the airline to quickly define the cause of the accident, saying that prevention is more important than emergency response.
A court in Jurong, Jiangsu Province recently sentenced two people to probation after they were charged with intentional homicide for helping a cancer sufferer commit suicide. The cancer sufferer, a woman surnamed Wu, was the wife of one of the defendants, and she had begged her husband several times to help her get relief from her pain and suffering. The husband finally asked his friend to hit his wife with a car. Wu did not die immediately, and was sent to hospital, although she discharged herself and died at home a few days later. The judge said that Wu had actually died of cancer rather than the car
accident according to the autopsy, and that the two defendants had voluntarily surrendered themselves to the police. Netizens showed great sympathy for the two defendants, with many hoping that assisted-dying could be legalized for terminally ill people at their own request.
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