Extra! Extra! Firewalls, tree-planting coolies and death vans

• Blogs are the next target of internet censorship in China. (Weren't they already?)
• Ever wanted to know how the Great Firewall works? Well, a group of researchers at Cambridge found out and an Andrew Lih translates this into laymen's terms.
• Mysterious men mercilessly killed 200 trees -- but it was all a misunderstanding.
• A woman is sentenced to a punishment of planting 13,620 trees -- we suppose another 200 wouldn't hurt her, too much?
• But sometimes even money can't buy your life back. If you've been sentenced to death in China, your last moments on earth might be spent in the new mobile execution vehicles -- the "death vans".
• Want to know how to avoid the places that thieves like to frequent? One man published a map telling you exactly that.
• Knowing that might not save you from the "black-hearted" cabbies though, like the one that charged some foreigners 10 times the actual cab fare. However, they did manage to catch him.
• Which leads us to the conclusion that bicycles are still a good bet -- and if Shanghai starts getting bona fide bike lanes biking will become a whole lot more attractive.
• Not everyone is happy about the new Tibetan railroad.

Photo by Joshgotto taken from the Shanghaiist photos page. To see your photos on our photos page, use Flickr and tag your photos “shanghaiist”. Or you can email your photos to photos@shanghaiist.com and they will automatically appear on our site.