BEIJING: China’s Communist Party has named new top officials to lead anti-corruption agencies at the country’s banking and insurance regulators as it makes final preparations for a twice-a-decade party congress later this month.
Lin Guoyao, a former municipal official in the coastal province of Fujian, has been appointed chief of the Party Disciplinary Commission at the China Insurance Regulatory Commission, according to an official online statement released late on Tuesday.
Lin, 51, spent 31 years working in the southern province, rising to the post of vice mayor in the city of Xiamen before being appointed party secretary of Longyan city.
Li Xinran, 45, has been named chief of the Party Disciplinary Commission at the China Banking Regulatory Commission. He worked for 22 years at the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), China’s top anti-corruption watchdog.
The new appointments have fueled speculation that President Xi Jinping’s crackdown on corruption in the financial sector could escalate further after the campaign put China’s former top insurance regulator Xiang Junbo and some big tycoons under investigation.
Xiang, the highest-ranking financial regulator being investigated for graft to date, was expelled from the Communist Party last month after the CCDI said he had “committed serious violations of political discipline and rules” in order to serve personal political interests.
China appoints new top graft-busters at key financial regulators
China appoints new top graft-busters at key financial regulators
Protesters try to attack driver after truck speeds through anti-Iran demonstration in Los Angeles
LOS ANGELES: Los Angeles police responded Sunday after somebody drove a U-Haul box truck down a street crowded with marchers demonstrating in support of the Iranian people, causing protesters to scramble out of the way and then run after the speeding vehicle to try to attack the driver.
The U-Haul truck, with its side mirrors shattered, was stopped several blocks away and surrounded by police cars. ABC7 news helicopter footage showed officers keeping the crowd at bay as demonstrators swarmed the truck, throwing punches at the driver and thrusting flagpoles through the driver’s side window.
The police department confirmed its officers were on the scene but didn’t immediately say if anyone was arrested.
Two people were evaluated by paramedics and both declined treatment, the Los Angeles Fire Department said.
Several hundred people had gathered Sunday afternoon in the Westwood neighborhood to protest against the Iranian theocracy. The LA police department eventually issued a dispersal order, and by 5 p.m. only about a hundred protesters were still at the scene, ABC7 reported.
Activists say a crackdown on nationwide protests in Iran has killed more than 530 people. Protesters flooded the streets in Iran’s capital of Tehran and its second-largest city again Sunday.
