News on the protests in Tibet that occurred earlier this week was only able to be accessed on the black market as Chinese officials censored and restricted most stories about the protests.

From the New York Times:

 For the past few days, CNN, the BBC, Google News, Yahoo and YouTube have been blocked or have faced temporary blackouts or service disruptions in some parts of China. Some foreign journalists also say their e-mail service has been disrupted.

The BBC reports on what happens when users inside China attempt to use Google to find information on Tibet:

When the BBC tried searching on Google inside China for stories about “Tibet”, the latest news stories about the protests were listed, but the stories themselves were not opening.

Searching on “Lhasa” brought up an error message saying “Connection was reset” - a familiar end to many searches for information about the protests. In recent days sites like Yahoo and Youtube have also been similarly affected.

Chinese authorities are saying that 16 people have died, with Tibetan exile groups saying at least 80 people have died.