CHINA: MAN GETS DEATH SENTENCE FOR 8 MURDERS

a villager from northwest China's Gansu Province was sentenced to death for a series of murders that included six people in his village and a taxi driver and a prostitute elsewhere in the province. Ran Zhouping, 32, a native of Shangla Village, Dangchang County, got a death sentence in a new trial after he confessed to further crimes while serving a life sentence for having murdered a prostitute, the Lanzhou Intermediate People's Court heard. Ran's new conviction was for the fatal stabbings of villager Ran Jinshui's mother and four children under age 10. He then gunned down Ran Jinshui, who was doing farming work, on Sept. 30, 2001. The court heard that the murder of Ran Jinshui arose from a dinner-time dispute. Ran then fled to Wuwei City, elsewhere in the province, where he and two others fatally stabbed a taxi driver surnamed Zhou in a robbery attempt on Nov. 28, 2001. He then went to the Gansu provincial capital, Lanzhou, where he used the pseudonym Zhao Jiangren. There, he killed a prostitute surnamed Wang after having had sex with her at a hotel on Apr. 6, 2002.