President Hu Jintao cut short his meeting with other G8 leaders in Italy because of the ethnic unrest in Xinjiang Province, western China that has left at least 156 dead and more than 1,000 injured.

The capital of Xinjiang, Urumqi, continues to be tense and chaotic, despite the deployment of thousands of police and military. Anti-riot forces are trying to keep ethnic Chinese and Uighur residents separated.

On Tuesday, mobs of Han Chinese armed with sticks, knives and makeshift weapons roamed the streets of Urumqi, searching for Uighurs. Meanwhile, hundreds of Uighur women and older men confronted riot-control troops, demanding the return of their sons and husbands who have been detained in security sweeps.

How many of the dead came from each ethnic group is not clear. The government states that most of those killed were Han Chinese, while Uighur exile groups claim that about 90 of the dead were Uighurs.

The Communist Party boss in Urumqi, Li Zhi, says that anyone found guilty of participating in the killings will be executed.

Photo by Peter Macdiarmid / Getty Images.

Corazon Aquino, former president of the Philippines, has decided to stop treatments after a year and a half battle with colon cancer. She was the first woman president in Asia, ruling from 1986 to 1992.

The 76-year-old Aquino became president after the Filipino people deposed dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986. Her husband, Senator Ninoy Aquino, was killed in 1983 - presumably on Marcos's orders.

The Senator's murder sparked off the People Power movement that ended when Marcos fled into exile, three years later.

The dictator's widow, Imelda Marcos, is among the well-wishers praying for Aquino, according to a BBC report.

Photo by Chung Sung Jun / Getty Images.

China's Xinhua News reports that at least 156 people died in the city of Urumqi, Xinjiang Province in ethnic riots between the local Uighur people and Han Chinese immigrants.

The violence has also left at least 800 people injured.

The Uighurs are a Muslim and ethnic-Turkic people, with a distinct culture and history from the Han Chinese majority. Beijing asserted control over the Uighur region after the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949; some Uighurs have been pushing for independence ever since.

What sparked yesterday's violence is not entirely clear. Rumors are swirling about violence against women of both ethnicities as the source of the fighting. Some reports also cite fighting between the two groups in southern China in June, or conflict over factory jobs.

Despite Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei's assertion that the June 12 presidential election results were valid, other members of the clerical leadership are beginning to call for new elections.

Top moderate clerics, including former president Ali Rafsanjani, have defied the will of the Guardian Council, which certified the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Rafsanjani is the head of the Assembly of Experts, a sort of clerical government watchdog group which has the power to remove the Supreme Leader from office.

Meanwhile, ultra-conservative clerics are calling for the trial and possible execution of pro-reform protesters, hundreds of whom have been arrested in recent weeks.

Photo of former president Rafsanjani by Wathiq Khuzaie / Getty Images.