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A US destroyer intercepted a hijacked Israeli-managed oil tanker in the Gulf of Aden earlier today, freed the crew, and took the Houthi pirates into custody. My colleague Jeff Charles covered the piracy in this post, High Seas Drama: Another Israeli Tanker Seized by Unidentified Attackers Near Yemen.Shortly after dawn local time, the Central Park, a small Liberian-flagged oil and chemical tanker managed by an Israeli company registered in London, sent a distress call saying it was being boarded by armed men. The USS Mason, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, was operating in the area. According to reports, the Mason directed...

URUMQI, China—This city on China’s Central Asia frontier may be one of the most closely surveilled places on earth. Security checkpoints with identification scanners guard the train station and roads in and out of town. Facial scanners track comings and goings at hotels, shopping malls and banks. Police use hand-held devices to search smartphones for encrypted chat apps, politically charged videos and other suspect content. To fill up with gas, drivers must first swipe their ID cards and stare into a camera. China’s efforts to snuff out a violent separatist movement by some members of the predominantly Muslim Uighur ethnic...

Condemned Briton's 'Heartbroken' Family Beg For Compassion from China The family of Akmal Shaikh, the British man condemned to death in China, have made a last-minute appeal to the Chinese authorities to show mercy. By David Eimer in Beijing 28 Dec 2009 Akmal Shaikh, a British national who is facing the death penalty in China for possession of heroin Photo: AFP/GETTY Mr Shaikh is due to be executed in Urumqi at 10.30am Tuesday morning local time for heroin smuggling. "We're here to plead for clemency and we hope the Chinese government shows compassion. His life is in their hands now,"...

China to send 'harmony makers' to Urumqi 7,000 officials being sent to Urumqi after last week's deadly protests "Harmony makers" meant to ease tensions after demonstrators clashed with police Demonstrators were demanding better police protection after attacks Han Chinese accuse Uyghurs of attacking people using hypodermic needles (CNN) -- China is sending 7,000 officials to the western city of Urumqi after last week's deadly protests over a strange series of syringe stabbings, state-run media reported. The officials, known as "harmony makers," are meant to ease tensions after demonstrators, demanding better police protection, clashed with police for two days. The unrest...

Xinjiang police published the photoes of 15 suspects wanted globally. 1 of the 15 wanted suspects is Han and the others are Uyghur. BTW, after having arrested 253 suspects invloved in the bloody riots in Urumqi on July 5th, Xinjiang police announced that they had arrested 319 more suspects again. Xinjiang police pledge that " all thugs would be arrested and none of them has chance to escape"

SNIPPET: "BEIJING - THREE Uighur men tried to incite other Muslims to launch a 'jihad' and attacked a mosque security guard before police shot and killed two of them, state media reported on Tuesday. The incident began when around 150 Muslims were praying in a mosque in Urumqi, the capital of the northwest Xinjiang region on Monday, Xinhua news agency said, citing an unnamed imam who was giving a service at the time. One man stood up and tried to take over the prayers but was stopped, the imam told Xinhua. A few minutes later the man reportedly stood up...

An oil tank exploded at a chemical plant in Urumqi, capital of northwest China's restive Xinjiang region, on Sunday morning, the official Xinhua News Agency reported quoting firefighters. No casualties have been reported so far and the cause is being investigated, the report said. The explosion occurred around 10 a.m. at a refinery of China National Petroleum Corp. in northern Urumqi, Xinhua quoted city firefighters as saying.

On Wednesday, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan announced his country will ask the UN Security Council to discuss the ethnic rioting that has scarred China’s Xinjiang region this week. Then he upped the rhetoric. “The incidents in China are, simply put, a genocide,” Erdogan said on Friday. “There’s no point in interpreting this otherwise.” On July 5, a peaceful demonstration by the local Uighurs,Turkic Muslims,apparently triggered a savage reaction by Chinese police, and that led to bloody clashes between enraged Uighurs and Hans, members of the majority ethnic group in China. The disturbances started in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang,and...

What was once a grocery shop is now a blackened mess. Two boys in shorts and singlets play in the rubble but the usual occupants are absent. Five days ago a Han Chinese family was butchered in this small shop — victims of the Uighurs who rampaged through Urumqi. Yu Dongzhi described how he clawed through the smoking ruins of the store to search for the family who lived there. He hoped to find his sister, Yu Xinli; her husband, Zhang Mingying; their 13-year-old son; her elderly mother-in-law; and a nephew aged 27. The police helped him to dig among...

Chinese Riot Police Deployed in Urumqi

CHINA'S President Hu Jintao has abandoned plans to attend a G8 summit in Italy, returning home early to deal with ethnic violence in the north-western region of Xinjiang that has left at least 156 dead in China's . The Chinese Foreign Ministry said on its website that Mr Hu had left for China "due to the situation" in energy-rich Xinjiang, which borders central Asia, where 156 people have been killed, 1080 injured and 1434 arrested in unrest between Han Chinese and Muslim Uighurs since Sunday. Late yesterday, mobs of Han Chinese wielding clubs, metal bars, cleavers and axes had melted...

Thousands of angry ethnic Han Chinese wielding clubs and machetes roamed this capital city of Xinjiang territory and engaged in sporadic revenge attacks against Uighurs after deadly riots Sunday. The fresh unrest prompted Chinese President Hu Jintao to fly home early Wednesday from Italy, where he had been scheduled to attend the meeting of the Group of Eight leading nations. His sudden departure from such a high-profile international event underlined the severity of the challenge the Xinjiang violence presents to China's leadership. In Urumqi, authorities imposed a curfew and security forces tried to keep the two ethnic groups apart in...

140 slain as Chinese riot police, Muslims clash in northwestern city Eight hundred people are injured and hundreds are reported arrested in Urumqi. The Uighur demonstrators were protesting against racial discrimination. By Barbara Demick July 6, 2009 Firefighters are seen dousing a bus in Urumqi, the main city in Xinjiang, where China's ethnic Uighur minority is concentrated. Eight hundred people were injured and hundreds held as demonstrations against racial discrimination erupted into street violence. (Shen Qiao / New China News Agency / July 5, 2009) Reporting from Beijing - China's worst ethnic violence in years broke out Sunday in the...

More than 100 people have been killed and 800 injured in a riot which broke out in the ethnically sensitive far-Western Chinese province of Xinjiang. The death-toll, which stands at 129, marks a major escalation in the casualty figures from the disturbance which broke out on Sunday night after police tried to disperse a demonstration by members of the Uighur Muslim minority in the provincial capital, Urumqi. Initial reports said that just three people had been killed in running battles with police that left burned-out cars and buses and several smashed shop-fronts. Xinhua, the state-operated news service, did not provide...

some photos abt the biggest muslim city in china: Urumchi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China.

/begin my translationChina: Coal Mine Collapse... 82 Dead or Missing(Beijing, Yonhap News) Park Ki-sung -- In early morning, July 11th, a gas explosion occurred at a coal mine in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous District, China. The mine collapsed as a result, and 22 are dead, while 60 are still missingAround 2:30 am in local time, gas, filling inside a Shen-long Coal Mine in Fukang Perfecture, exploded. Among 87 miners working at the time, only five were rescued, and 22 were found dead. The authorities dispatched emergency rescue crews to the scene right after the incident, and working on the rescue of 60...