Asia, Political Scandal | featured news

China's communist leadership expelled Bo Xilai from the ruling party Friday and sought to bury him with charges ranging from corruption to sexual affairs, aiming to sweep away their most damaging scandal in decades while finally scheduling their long-awaited leadership transition for November.

Former Mafia-busting police chief Wang Lijun faces 15 years behind bars after the second major criminal case in China's biggest political scandal in years concluded today. But the guilty verdict left the public and analysts guessing if the scandal's central figure, disgraced former leader Bo Xilai, will himself face trial.

A former police chief at the center of a major China political scandal admitted attempting to defect to the United States, and did not contest charges of bribery and illegal surveillance at his trial on Tuesday, a court official said.

The one-day murder trial of Gu Kailai, the wife of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai, concluded with prosecutors telling the court that she slipped poison into a glass of water to kill British businessman Neil Heywood after he got drunk. Gu killed Heywood, they argued, because he threatened the security of her Harvard University son.

Japanese opposition parties vowed on Sunday to pursue a funding scandal that has ensnared a ruling party kingpin ahead of a mid-year election, but stopped short of threatening to delay a budget debate in parliament.

The 86-year-old governor of a southern Indian state resigned, a day after a television news channel broadcast a tape allegedly showing him in bed with three women.