5 killed, including 2 police, in mass rural shooting

Five people were killed, including two police officers, in a shooting yesterday in rural northern China, police said. The early morning shooting in Hebei province’s Suning county marked a rare incidence of gun crime in China, where private ownership of firearms is illegal. The gunman, 40-year-old Liu Shuangrui, who was among those killed, had suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, according to a statement from the police department in the surrounding municipality of Cangzhou. Liu turned a double-barreled shotgun on his neighbors, killing two, before police arrived at the scene, the statement said. Two officers were then shot to death, including the political commissar of the county police department, before Liu was shot and killed, it said. Two other police officers were among five people injured in the shooting.

3D printing helps separate conjoined twins

With the help of 3D printing technology, doctors in Shanghai yesterday successfully separated three-month-old twin sisters who were conjoined at the hip. The twins, born in Ganzhou City, Jiangxi Province, were connected by soft tissues at the hip and lower spine. They have mostly separate digestive systems but share one lower bowel. After a five-hour operation in the Children’s Hospital of Fudan University in Shanghai, the twins were separated. Chief surgeon Zheng Shan said they used 3D printing to build two models simulating the structure of the babies’ connected parts, which helped them carry out simulated surgery when making plans for the procedure. Since the year 2000, the hospital has successfully separated seven pairs of conjoined twins.