China blocks Twitter service ahead of anniversary

Access to the popular social networking service Twitter and email service Hotmail was blocked across mainland China late on Tuesday afternoon, two days before the twentieth anniversary of a bloody crackdown on Tiananmen Square. Indignant users filled chatrooms with protest, after access to Twitter was denied. Thursday is the twentieth anniversary of June 4, 1989, when tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square before dawn to quell weeks of protest by students and workers. China has never released a death toll from the crackdown on what it classes as a "counter-revolutionary" conspiracy.