Free Republic

President Barack Obama was briefed on a former provincial police chief's overnight stay in a U.S. consulate in China in February while it was in progress or soon after it ended, a senior administration official said Friday, shedding new light on how significantly the U.S. viewed the encounter at the time. The 30-hour visit to the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu by Wang Lijun, who had just been relieved of his job as police chief, rapidly spurred controversy in China and came just a week before Vice President Xi Jinping, who is expected to become China's next leader, paid a visit...

Mr Obama was briefed immediately on the suspected poisoning of the 41 year-old, which Chinese officials are linking to Mr Heywood’s powerful political allies, when American diplomats were told of the murder allegation. Gu Kailai, Mr Heywood’s former business partner and the wife of Bo Xilai, a senior politician who had been tipped for the highest political office, is suspected of ordering the Briton’s murder in a case at the centre of a political storm in China. The couple have disappeared from sight as the Communist Party attempts to regain stability....... Mr Obama was informed of suspicions over Mr Heywood’s...