Chinese politician Bo Xilai, once a rising star, has been stripped of his elite Communist Party post while his wife is being investigated for the murder of a British national, state media said.
Xinhua first issued a short dispatch late Tuesday announcing Bo had been suspended from the party's powerful 25-member Politburo and from the wider Central Committee, which consists of more than 300 top officials.
The report said "Comrade Bo Xilai" was suspected of being involved in "serious discipline violations", which in China usually refers to corruption, but gave no details.
Bo was one of China's most high-profile politicians and a rising star in the party until he was sacked last month as party chief of the southwestern metropolis of Chongqing.
The 62-year-old's troubles started in February when Wang Lijun, his former police chief, fled to a US consulate and reportedly asked for asylum.
The scandal remained shrouded in mystery until news emerged late last month that London had asked China to reinvestigate the death of a British national in Chongqing in November amid rumours it might be linked to Bo's family.
On Tuesday, in a second brief dispatch, Xinhua said police had reopened a probe into the death of Neil Heywood after finding evidence Bo's wife, Gu Kailai, may have been involved in his murder.
Gu has been "transferred to judicial authorities for the suspected crime of intentional homicide" of Heywood, the report said, adding Wang made allegations about the death of the British businessman when he visited the US consulate.
Just when we thought we had seen the epic failure of every single possible "alternative energy" project by this administration, along comes the announcement that the USDA is investing $5 million in a "biogas anaerobic digester" that will use "cow manure to heat an ethanol plant and create 15 permanent jobs." Which for anyone confused, is roughly exactly what it sounds like. Perhaps if "Hope and Change" is a little passe now, a far more appropriate slogan for the 2012 Campaign will be "From Bullshit to Jobs, and Back Again."
So how many shit shovelers does it take to run a "biogas anaerobic digester"? Apparently 15. At $333,333 a poop, pardon pop.
#1
I don't understand why they need $5 million for this unless it is some Congressman paying back some dairy farmer for his political contributions. Farms do that all the time where I come from. Chicken houses use chicken crap in anaerobic digesters to make methane to heat the chicken houses. Dairy farmers use cow poop to make methane to heat the milking barns, hog farmers use pig poop to heat the hog barns.
This is nothing new, exciting, or cutting edge and people have been doing it since the 1970's that I am aware of. This sounds to me like a Congress Critter sliding a bone to a constituent who was a big donor to their campaign.
#7
With the amount of BS produced hourly in Washinton they'd generate enough ethenal to fuel the world. Problem is half think the BS are precious nuggets of wisdom.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.