Riot police advanced on Hong Kong democracy  protesters in the early hours of Monday, firing volleys of tear gas after launching a baton-charge in the worst unrest there since China took back control of the former British colony two decades ago.

Some protesters erected barricades to block security forces amid chaotic scenes still unfolding just hours before one of the world’s major financial centers was due to open for business. Many roads leading to the Central business district remained sealed off as thousands defied police calls to retreat.

Earlier, police baton-charged a crowd blocking a key road in the government district in defiance of official warnings that the demonstrations were illegal.

Several scuffles broke out between police in helmets, gas masks and riot gear, with demonstrators angered by the firing of tear gas, last used in Hong Kong in 2005.

“If today I don’t stand up, I will hate myself in future,” said taxi driver Edward Yeung, 55, as he swore at police on the frontline. “Even if I get a criminal record it will be a glorious one.”

White clouds of gas wafting between some of the world’s most valuable office towers and shopping malls underscored the struggle that China’s Communist Party faces in stamping its will on Hong Kong’s more than 7 million people.

China took back control of Hong Kong from Britain in 1997.

Eight years earlier, Beijing’s bloody crackdown on pro-democracy students in Tiananmen Square in 1989 had sent shockwaves through Hong Kong as people saw how far China’s rulers would go to maintain their grip on power.

Thousands of protesters were still milling around the main Hong Kong government building, ignoring messages from student and pro-democracy leaders to retreat for fear that the police might fire rubber bullets.

Australia and Italy issued travel warnings for Hong Kong, urging their citizens to avoid protest sites. Some financial firms in the business district advised staff to work from home or from another location.

The U.S. State Department said in a statement on Sunday that Washington supported Hong Kong’s well-established traditions and fundamental freedoms, such as peaceful assembly and expression.

Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in the country on Tuesday morning in a show of strength to the prevailing China-Sri Lanka Relations.

Incidentally, it is after a period of twenty eight years that a head of state from China arrived in Sri Lanka.

President Xi Jinping was warmly welcomed to the country at the Bandaranaike International Airport.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa and First Lady Shiranthi Wickremasinghe Rajapaksa welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinping and First Lady Peng Liyuan at the Bandaranaike International Airport on Tuesday morning.

A number of high-level officials were present at the airport to welcome the Chinese President and his delegation. The visiting Chinese President called on President Mahinda Rajapaksa  at the Presidential Secretariat. Both leaders were engaged in an extensive discussion.

The final phase of the Norochcholai Thermal Power Plant that was constructed with Chinese aid of 1.34 Billion US Dollars was declared open by Chinese President Xi Jinping. The presentation took place at the Presidential Secretariat.

The two leaders joined their delegations to sign more than 20 bilateral agreements to enhance cooperation between the two countries.

On Wednesday, President Rajapaksa and President Xi Jinping will visit the Colombo International Container Terminal to launch the construction of the Colombo Port City.

The First Lady of the Republic of China Peng Liyuan is also accompanying President Xi Jinping on his visit to Sri Lanka. Here is a look at the illustrious career of the First Lady of China Peng Liyuan.

Scroll down for photos.

The new First Lady of China was almost unknown until she emerged on Xi Jinping’s first presidential tour. In her homeland – she has been a superstar for three decades – Mrs Peng’s emergence on the world stage has been greeted with delight in China.

Well before she met the President, Mrs. Peng was arguably the most famous singer in China.

Her place at the top table of the Chinese establishment was cemented in 1985 when she spent 20 days on the front line entertaining troops as they fought a border conflict with Vietnam.

She gained popularity as a soprano singer from her regular appearances on the annual CCTV New Year’s Gala, a widely viewed mainland Chinese television programme that airs during the Chinese New Year.

She has won many honours in singing competitions in China.

She was the first in China to obtain a Master’s Degree in traditional ethnic music when the degree was established in the 1980s.

Born in Peng village in 1962, in the Eastern Province of Shandong, Mrs. Peng comes from a poor family and the very opposite end of the Communist Party to her princeling husband, whose father was a vice-premier of China.

Mrs. Peng is actively involved in politics herself, and is a member of the 11th National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.

She is also a WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS since 2011.[12]

As of 2014, she is listed as the 57th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes.

A teenager was electrocuted and died in her sleep while she was charging her phone.

The 18-year-old, who has not been named, died in Xinjiang, on July 24.

The deceased’s sister said she smelt burning when she returned to their home and found her sister lying dead in her bedroom with burns across her body. A broken phone was next to her.

It is not clear if the woman was using an authentic charger, or a cheap counterfeit version which have been linked to other fatalities. 

Experts from the Forensic Science Association of China said the teenager had livor mortis across her neck, hands and leg, and concluded that she’d died from electrocution, the Shanghaiist reported.

The teeanger’s sister said online that the phone had been purchased in Urumqi and the retailer was now discussing compensating the family.

In July last year Air Stewardess Ma Ailun, 23, was killed by an electric shock when she answered a call on her phone  while it was recharging on a knock-off charger.

When Kiab turned 16, her brother promised to take her to a party in a tourist town in northern Vietnam. Instead, he sold her to a Chinese family as a bride.

The ethnic Hmong teenager spent nearly a month in China until she was able to escape her new husband, seek help from local police and return to Vietnam.

Vulnerable women in countries close to China, not only Vietnam but also North Korea, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar – are being forced into marriages in the land of the one-child policy, experts say.

The attackers drove a car into the station and set off explosives on Saturday morning, the local government said on its website.

Three police suffered minor injuries but no civilians were hurt, it added.

The Chinese authorities blame Muslim Uighurs from Xinjiang for an increasing number of attacks in the province.

"On the morning of 21 June, a group of thugs drove a car into a police building in Yecheng County, Kashgar province and detonated explosives," the local government website said.

"Police shot dead the 13 attackers," it reported. It provided no further details.

Verifying reports from the Xinjiang region is difficult because access for journalists is restricted and the flow of information is tightly controlled.

The authorities have tightened security in Xinjiang in recent months.

On Monday, China executed 13 people in Xinjiang for what it called "terrorist attacks".

The authorities also sentenced three men - believed to Uighurs - over a fatal car crash in Beijing last year.

Five people were killed when a car ploughed into a crowd in Beijing's Tiananmen Square last October. Dozens of others were injured.

Attacks blamed by Beijing on Uighur separatists include deadly bomb and knife attacks on railway stations in Urumqi in Xinjiang, and Kunming in south-west China.

Uighur leaders deny that they are co-ordinating a terrorist campaign.

Activists have accused Beijing of exaggerating the threat from Uighur separatists to justify a crackdown on the Uighurs' religious and cultural freedoms.

A woman had this 8ft-long (2.5-metre) tapeworm removed from her stomach after eating undercooked meat on holiday

The patient, who is in her 30s and identified only as Mrs Li, went to see a doctor in Xiamen, in China’s Fujian province, after noticing unusual fluids in her stools.

She was diagnosed with teniasis, an intestinal tapeworm infection caused by eating undercooked, contaminated beef while travelling in south-east Asia in January.

The parasite lays its eggs in cysts which form on many animals and if the meat not properly cooked, they can hatch and grow in the human gut.

Li was able to pass the unwanted guest after being treated with traditional Chinese medicine, but admitted the thought of it living inside her still makes her feel sick.

‘It’s disgusting and almost makes me faint,’ said  Li.

Tapeworms were for many years thought to be a weight-loss aid to past generations, with Victorian women swallowing their eggs to get thinner.

However, medical journalist Michael Mosley, who swallowed three cysts from an African cow’s tongue for a BBC documentary earlier this year, found that he actually gained weight afterwards – despite all three developing into tapeworms.

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa arrived in Shanghai, China, this morning to attend the 4th summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA).

The President was welcomed at the Pudong International Airport in Shanghai by Deputy Secretary-General of Shanghai Municipal Government Mr. Huang Rong, Executive Vice President of Shanghai People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (SPAFFC) Mr. Wang Xiaoshu and Sri Lanka's Ambassador in China Mr. Ranjith Uyangoda.

President Rajapaksa will attend the 4th CICA Summit tomorrow (May 21) and is expected to address the gathering. In addition to participating in the Conference, the President will also hold several bilateral discussions with heads of state who are also in the country for the CICA Summit.

Later this evening, President Rajapaksa will attend the welcome banquet and evening performance being hosted by Chinese President Xi Jinping and First Lady Peng Liyuan.

Minister of External Affairs Prof. G.L. Peiris, President's Chief of Staff Mr. Gamini Senarath, Secretary to the Ministry of External Affairs Mrs. Kshenuka Senewiratne, Sri Lanka's Ambassador in China Mr. Ranjith Uyangoda and Lt. Yoshitha Rajapaksa are accompanying the President.

China is planning to build a train line that would, in theory, connect Beijing to the United States. According to a report in the Beijing Times, citing an expert at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Chinese officials are considering a route that would start in the country's northeast, thread through eastern Siberia and cross the Bering Strait via a 125-mile long underwater tunnel into Alaska.

"Right now we're already in discussions. Russia has already been thinking about this for many years," says Wang Mengshu, the engineer cited in the article. The proposed"China-Russia-Canada-America" line would be some 8,000 miles long, 1,800 miles longer than the Trans-Siberian railroad. The tunnel that the Chinese would help bore beneath the icy seas would be four times the length of what traverses the English Channel.

That's reason enough to be skeptical of the project, of which there are few details beyond what was attributed to the one official cited by the state-run Beijing Times. Meanwhile, a report in the state-run China Daily insists the country does have the technology and means to complete a construction project of this scale, including another tunnel that would link the Chinese province of Fujian with nearby Taiwan.

In the past half decade or so, China has embarked on an astonishing rail construction spree, laying down tens of thousands of miles tracks and launching myriad high-speed lines. It has signaled its intent to build a "New Silk Road" -- a heavy-duty freight network through Central Asia that would connect with Europe via rail rather than the old caravans that once bridged West and East. A map that appeared on Xinhua's news site outlines the route below, alongside a parallel vision for a "maritime Silk Road."

While some of its neighbors watch China's rise warily, the main plank of Beijing's soft power pitch has always been its stated desire to improve economic ties and trade with virtually everyone. "China’s wisdom for building an open world economy and open international relations is being drawn on more and more each day," trumpets the Xinhua report that accompanies the map above, according to the Diplomat.

To that end, Beijing has assiduously resurrected the narrative of the ancient Silk Road as well as given prime billing to the tales of China's famed Ming dynasty treasure fleets, which sailed all across the Indian Ocean. Seen in such grand historic perspective, a tunnel to Alaska doesn't seem too far-fetched.