A court in eastern China sentenced to death the owner...

A court in eastern China sentenced to death the owner of a fast-food outlet for poisoning snacks at a competitor's shop, causing the death of dozens of people.
The poisoning - in the small town of Tangshan on September 15 - made at least 300 customers seriously ill.
Police say the defendant, Chen Zhenping, confessed to carrying out the poisonings out of jealousy.
Chen's own snack shop was not as successful as his competitor - so he used powerful rat poison to lace the food at his competitor's store.
He was pronounced guilty and sentenced to death following a trial lasting just three hours.
At least 38 people - many of them schoolchildren - died after eating breakfast snacks from the tiny fast-food outlet, a branch of the Heshengyuan Soy Milk chain on Tangshan's main street. There were appalling scenes at the snack shop as people who ate the food there collapsed in violent convulsions.
The BBC correspondent in Beijing said the fact that so many people died, and that so many of them were children, made this an emotionally-charged case, but in a country where courts are controlled by the Communist Party, and confessions are regularly beaten out of suspects, there have to be serious concerns about the validity of any verdict.