Chinese police detain suspect in plane bomb threat

BEIJING – Chinese police say they have detained a man suspected of phoning an airport with a false bomb threat that grounded a domestic flight.

The Hubei provincial public security department says Xiong Yi was caught at a hotel in the southern city of Dongguan.

It said in a statement late Saturday that Xiong confessed that he made a phone call to an airport in nearby Shenzhen on Thursday claiming that explosives had been placed on a plane that was bound for Shenzhen.

The call forced the plane to make an emergency landing in the provincial capital of Wuhan. Police inspected the aircraft and found no explosives.