DEHUI, China (Reuters) – Relatives of workers killed when fire engulfed a chicken processing plant in rural northeast China blocked traffic and scuffled with police on Tuesday, demanding answers to one of China’s worst industrial disasters in recent years. At least 120 people died, and more than 70 were injured.

A handful of men and woman knelt in the middle of the road in Dehui in Jilin province to stop cars, while a crowd of more than 100 people gathered around them. Police dispersed the protesters after about an hour.

DEHUI, China (Reuters) – Relatives of workers killed as fire swept through a poultry slaughterhouse in rural northeast China blocked traffic and scuffled with police on Tuesday demanding answers to one of China’s worst industrial disasters in recent years. At least 120 people died.

A handful of men and woman knelt in the middle of the road in Dehui in Jilin province to stop cars, while a crowd of more than 100 people gathered around them. Police dispersed the protesters after about an hour.

BEIJING (Reuters) – A group of families demanding justice for the victims of China’s 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown has denounced new President Xi Jinping for failing to launch political reforms, saying he was taking China “backwards towards Maoist orthodoxy”.

The Tiananmen Mothers activist group has long urged the leadership to open a dialogue and provide a reassessment of the 1989 pro-democracy movement, bloodily suppressed on June 4 that year by the government which labeled it “counter-revolutionary”.

BEIJING (Reuters) – Dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei made his first foray into the musical world on Wednesday with the release of the top single from his debut album, a song called “Dumbass” that takes inspiration from his detention in 2011.

The video for the heavy metal song, which was directed by Ai with cinematography by acclaimed filmmaker Christopher Doyle, depicts Ai’s 81 days in secretive detention in 2011, which sparked an international outcry.

QIANTUN, China, May 19 (Reuters) – Two years short of 70,
Zhang Guosheng spends his days caring for an 81-year-old fellow
villager – washing his clothes, bringing meals to his bed, and
keeping him company – a routine he’ll keep up until he himself
needs the type of care he is now giving.

“Living here is better than staying at home alone. We help
each other and have a common language,” said the spritely Zhang,
an enthusiastic dancer. “We are very happy here.”

LUSHAN, China (Reuters) – Rescuers struggled to reach a remote corner of southwestern China on Sunday as the toll of the dead and missing from the country’s worst earthquake in three years climbed to 203 with more than 11,000 injured.

The 6.6 magnitude quake struck in Lushan county, near the city of Ya’an in the southwestern province of Sichuan, close to where a devastating 7.9 temblor hit in May 2008 killing some 70,000.

DANDONG, China, April 12 (Reuters) – A single,
ancient-looking North Korean helicopter dropped five
paratroopers on their side of the Chinese border on Friday in a
rather less-than-defiant, lonely show of force following weeks
of angry war rhetoric from Pyongyang.

North Korea has ramped up its threats after being hit by new
U.N. sanctions since carrying out a third nuclear test in
February, prompting the United States to fly stealth jets over
the peninsula and to prepare anti-missile systems for Guam and
Alaska.

DANDONG, China (Reuters) – Some Chinese tour operators have halted travel to North Korea at the behest of local authorities and because of rising safety concerns as Pyongyang whips up war rhetoric following weeks of tension on the Korean peninsula.

Authorities in the northeastern city of Dandong have told tour agencies to halt overland tourism into North Korea, local travel agents said on Wednesday.

GAOMI, China (Reuters) – Chinese Nobel Literature Prize winner Mo Yan unexpectedly called for the release of jailed compatriot Liu Xiaobo, who won the Nobel Peace Prize two years ago, having come under fire from rights activists for not speaking up for him.

The author, a portly 57-year-old whose adopted pen name Mo Yan means “don’t speak”, said he had read some of Liu’s literary criticisms in the 1980s, but that he had no understanding of Liu’s work once it had turned towards politics.

BEIJING, Sept 15 (Reuters) – Thousands of protesters
besieged the Japanese embassy in Beijing on Saturday, hurling
rocks and bottles at the building as police struggled to keep
control, amid growing tensions between Asia’s two biggest
economies over a group of disputed islands.

Paramilitary police with shields and batons barricaded the
embassy, holding back slogan-chanting, flag-waving protesters
who at times appeared to be trying to storm the building.