Society

On Friday, a university student was sentenced to death for the murder of a young mother in Xi'an. The Yao Jiaxin case has drawn widespread public attention due to the identity of the killer and his cruel act.

This is the Intermediate People's Court of Xi'an.

A place not commonly associated with promising young musicians.

But on Friday, this was the place where a 21-year-old pianist was given the death sentence.

Judge, Xi'an Intermediate People's Court, said, "The motive is extremely despicable the measures are extremely cruel and the consequence is extremely serious."

At the age of 21, Yao was a student at the Xi'an Conservatory of Music.

17 people were killed and 24 others injured in a southern Beijing suburb Monday morning in the deadliest fire the Chinese capital has seen in nine years.

Nine men and eight women died in the fire, and most of them were migrant workers seeking accommodation in the building, said Wang Xin, deputy chief of the Daxing District Committee of the Communist Party of China.

Out of the 17 dead, thirteen were workers hired by an unlicensed garment workshop called Yuyun and the other four were tenants in the four-story building. And 11 of the dead lived on the ground floor, said Wang.

A Green Paper on the Rural Economy estimates a 9 percent rise in prices for agricultural produce this year, Beijing Times reported Wednesday.

Grain prices will rise 10 percent, according to the Green Paper jointly issued by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Tuesday.

China's first emergency evacuation helicopter goes into service at a private hospital in Changyuan county, Central China's Henan province, April 20, 2011.

The plane can carry five people and travel up to 700 kilometers in a single flight. It aims to facilitate prompt medical aid for patients who live in remote areas and to invite more experts from other provinces to help with diagnosis.