Chinese Kindergarten Teacher to Die for Her School Crime

A former kindergarten teacher in China "should be punished severely in accordance with the law," said a Henan province court ruling Monday, per CNN, and the punishment it doled out is the severest of all: death. Wang Yun killed one child and sickened two dozen others by adding sodium nitrite to their porridge on the morning of March 27, 2019. The BBC reports that the court said the poisoning came after Wang argued with a fellow teacher "over student management issues," and that the porridge she tampered with was intended for that teacher's class as "revenge."

News reports described the children as vomiting and fainting after consuming it. One of them reportedly spent 10 months in the hospital before dying in January. The court called Wang "despicable and vicious" and noted it wasn't her first poisoning: The Guardian reports she put the same chemical in her husband's mug in 2017, though he suffered only minor injuries. (More China stories.)