Two men punished for rumor mongering

Two Chinese men were punished with detention in separate cases on Wednesday for starting or spreading website rumors and causing public unease.

Both will face 10-day administrative detention, according to China's Law of Punishment for Public Security and Administration.

In one case, a 25-year-old man surnamed Li in Chenzhou City of central China's Hunan Province spread false information on tieba.baidu.com on Tuesday night. He warned locals "not to hang out in highly populated areas" as "the police had seized dozens of knives in Ailian Lake Park of the city".

"These knives are pretty much the same as those used in the terrorist attack at Kunming Railway Station (on March 1)," his post read.

The information was forwarded by microbloggers and messaging app WeChat users, triggering unease, police said.

Li said he did it "just for fun".

The other case involved another man surnamed Jiang in Yichang City of central China's Hubei Province.

On his microblog at sina.com on Tuesday night, he said a "major incident" had happened, saying "a child was poisoned to death by teachers of Jinbei Kindergarten in Yichang City".

"Even though the teachers there fed antiviral drugs to kids out of kindness, it is not acceptable. Those poor kids. It's so heart-wrenching," the post read.

The information quickly spread on the web, despite being untrue.

Jiang was arrested at a rental property in downtown Yichang early Wednesday morning.

He told police that he did it "to attract the attention of netizens".

Jiang's lie came amid cases of principals at kindergartens in the cities of Yichang, Xi'an and Jilin who had been illegally giving children anti-fever drugs.