February 5, 2010 On 5 February 1997, dozens of people were killed or injured in Gulja in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) when security forces opened fire on ethnic Uighur protesters.

That day, Uighur residentsof Gulja began a peaceful demonstration. They were protesting against the closure of independent religious schools, the banning of “meshreps” (a traditional form of social gathering), the closure of a local Uighur football league and high rates of unemployment among Uighurs.

Security forces carried out house-to-house searches detaining suspected protesters and supporters. Many of those detained were reportedly tortured, some to death.

Despite its recent threats to shut down its China-based operations, Google may in fact keep some of its businesses open there. According to a Fox News report, the search giant is conducting "delicate" talks with the Chinese government. The two sides are discussing ways that Google can maintain its research center, an advertising sales team, and Google's new mobile phone business in China, the report states.

Don't Be Evil

Google created an international incident earlier this month when it announced plans to stop censoring search results in China. It also said it may exit the world's largest Internet market because of cyberattacks there that appear to target Chinese human-rights activists.

Opera has sealed the hole its Mini browser tunneled through the Great Firewall of China.

With the international version of Opera Mini - the company's Java-based mobile browser - Chinese users had found a way of freeing themselves from local net filters, accessing sites otherwise banned by the government. The browser shuttles all net traffic through compression servers located outside the country, and naturally, those servers lack Chinese filters.

But on Friday, as reported by the BBC's Beijing bureau, Opera switched all Chinese users from Mini's international version to a Chinese version that uses local compression servers - and local filters.

Chinese Opera users, the BBC says, no longer have access to Facebook.

December 4, 2009 - Although China announced last week an ambitious energy efficiency plan to cut down CO2 emissions, Fredrik Reinfeld (Swedish Prime Minister but also the EU rotating president), said on Monday that "we can not solve the challenge of climate change for humanity if China does not assume a leadership role and responsibility".

"So far we believe that global efforts put on the table to mitigate the impact of greenhouse gases are not sufficient," Reinfeld said in the context of an EU-China summit held last Monday in Nanjing, capital of the coastal province of Jiangsu.

November 16, 2009 - Chinese health officials reported on Friday the first deaths in people who received the H1N1 vaccine. The Ministry of Health announced that the two people, including one teacher from Hunan province, died hours after receiving their inoculations. Since September, when the Ministry began its H1N1 immunization program, 12 million Chinese have received the pandemic flu shot.

A preliminary autopsy revealed that the teacher died of an apparent heart attack while playing basketball, and a Ministry spokesperson told the China Daily newspaper that the death was "a coincidental medical incident" and not related to the vaccine. No details on the second victim have been released so far.