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.

On June 30, 1997, the government of Great Britain turned over control of the city of Hong Kong, as well as neighboring territories, to the People's Republic of China.

Britain had ruled the island colony for 156 years, after seizing it in 1841 during the Second Opium War. The UK later signed a 99-year lease agreement with Qing China in 1898; in return for the promise of one day regaining control, China allowed the British to lease the Kowloon section of the mainland and some other islands along with Hong Kong.

In 1997, Britain honored the lease provisions, despite the radical changes in Chinese government during the interim. Fortunately, Hong Kong residents continue to enjoy more civil liberties than their mainland counterparts.

Photo by Tom Bonaventure via Getty Images.

On Sunday, the Iranian government announced that it had arrested nine of the British Embassy's local employees, accusing them of participating in the massive demonstrations that have rocked the country since a disputed election on June 12.

Five of the employees now have been released, while the remaining four are being interrogated further.

Meanwhile, the Guardian Council is beginning a recount of 10% of the votes cast, selected at random. Considering how quickly the results were announced following the closing of the polls, and the unusual consistency of the results across the diverse nation of Iran, this is likely the first time the ballots have been seen since they went into the ballot boxes.

Photo by Hamed Saber on Flickr.com.

On June 25, 1950, the North Korean Army launched an invasion of South Korea across the 38th Parallel. Devastating artillery fire, followed by more than 230,000 troops poured into South Korea, signaling the beginning of the Korean War.

The firing war continued for about three years, and caused more than 3 million military and civilian casualties. Officially, the Korean War continues to this day - South Korea never signed the peace treaty ending the war.

See US military photos of the Korean War here.

Photo by Spencer / US Dept. of Defense Archives.

Two Burmese supporters of imprisoned opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi were sentenced to 18 months in prison after leading prayers for her release in April.

The military regime in Burma charged Chit Pe and Aung Saw Wei of "insulting religion," under a law that was used against demonstrating Buddhist monks in 2007.

Three more activists were arrested two weeks ago for distributing photos of Aung San Suu Kyi in the former capital, Yangon.

Photo by Junko Kimura / Getty Images.

The situation in Iran continues to grow more unstable, with the regime imprisoning protesters, journalists and moderate clerics, even as the Guardian Council admits to wide-spread vote-counting irregularities.

Meanwhile, public opinion in Iran and world-wide has been galvanized by the video-taped death of 26-year-old Neda Agha-Soltan, who was shot in the chest as she got out of a car near a protest in Tehran. Since ordinary citizens cannot own guns in Iran, it is likely that she was shot by a member of the Basij militia.

The hard-line faction in Iran's theocracy seems to be digging in its heels, and the protester death toll likely has reached two dozen or more. However, the ayatollahs have yet to unleash a full Tiananmen Square-style campaign of repression.

Twenty years ago in Beijing, however, the pro-democracy protests had continued for two months before the government called out the tanks. Let's hope that it doesn't come to that in the streets of Tehran, Isfahan and other Iranian cities.

For an interesting perspective on this historical turning-point, see New York Times columnist Roger Cohen's take on the current situation in Iran.

Photo of protesters attacking a Basij office in Tehran by misterarasmus on Flickr.com.

The New York Times today reported on three Tibetan monks who risked their lives by protesting Chinese restrictions on Tibet in front of a group of foreign and Chinese journalists last spring.

Although fifteen monks took part in the protest, only these three have made it out of Tibet thus far. The fate of the other twelve is unknown.

The three monks, all in their early 20s, approached the twenty journalists and their official Chinese minders, unfurled banners and Tibetan flags, and told the journalists "We have no freedom of speech."

Immediately after this show of defiance, the three ran for their lives. They stayed in the countryside with nomadic families, then made their way over the border into Nepal. They eventually made their way to the Dalai Lama's compound in India.

The Chinese government had arranged the tour to demonstrate how calm and peaceful Tibet was after the suppression of massive protests associated with the 49th anniversary of the 1959 Tibetan uprising.

Photo of Tibetan monks in exile in India by Daniel Berehulak / Getty Images.