CHINA. FORMER CITY POLICE HEAD SENTENCED TO DEATH WITH REPRIEVE

Yang Shihong, a former local Communist Party official, was convicted of corruption and sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve by the Huangshi Municipal Intermediate People's Court in central China's Hubei Province.
Yang, former member of the Standing Committee of Wuhan Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China and former head of Wuhan Public Security Department, was also deprived of all political rights for life. About 1.3 million yuan (156,626 US dollars) of his property would also be confiscated, according to the court. It was alleged that Yang embezzled about 1.84 million yuan of public funds from 1994 to 1999 and took several large bribes between 1994 to 2003. Yang, 51, was dismissed from his posts in August 2003 and arrested in January 2004.