With the recent bus blasts in Kunming which claimed three lives and suspicious SMS messages to warn some residents from taking buses on the day of the explosion, the Shanghai government is taking no changes with the Olympic soccer matches being held in Shanghai Stadium. 1600 cameras will be installed into buses on 68 routes passing the stadium as well as an array of other fire extinguishing and safety devices. Click here for original Chinese......

With the help of U.S. defense contractors, an estimated 2 million closed circuit tv-cameras or CCTVs for short (oh the irony) will be installed over the next three years in Shenzhen. The surveillance experiment is part of the heroically named Golden Shield Project (Patriot Act, anyone?) which also gave birth to another of our favorite censorship models the Great Firewall. Considering the U.S. of A's recent track record of "homeland security" measures, it should come......

By Jos H.L. Kurstjens Around Shanghai New York Times: Plan to Extend Shanghai Rail Line Stirs Middle Class to Protest AFP: Shanghai metro apologises to kissing couple in Internet video Xinhua: Shanghai aims to become national trendsetter AFP: Beckham to play in Shanghai China Daily: Shanghai to base growth on service industry The New Year Chill AFP: Snow storms cause deaths in China ahead of Lunar New Year AP: Heavy snow in China strands......

This video entitled “这个女人太要了” ("This girl wants it too much") uploaded to Youtube just five days ago has received over 317,000 views and raised a storm on the Chinese internet. It shows a young Chinese couple hugging and kissing at a subway exit point before finally saying goodbye. Well, it turns out that the clip was taken via the surveillance cameras that you see all around subway stations and the (really annoying) voices in the......

A New Zealand-born contestant of the first series of Big Brother Australia, Gordon Sloan, has died in Beijing on a suspected heroin overdose. From the Herald Sun: According to a source close to Sloan, the former reality star's parents had travelled from their home in New Zealand after their son was admitted to hospital in a coma on September 1. It is understood the devastated couple opted to turn off the life support that had......

Two weeks ago, we told you about this unlucky pickpocket in Fuzhou that got beaten up in a bus, this time it's a robber in a bakery. The video on the right shows a young man in Fuzhou entering a confectionary, pretending to buy something, then crossing over to the other side where he beat the hell out of the poor girl manning the counter before running off with the cash in the till. Needless......

Texas is thawing, the Northeast is freezing, and a sort of natural order seems almost restored to the Ist-A-Verse. Almost. Londonist HQ—that is to say, the city of London—was battered by heavy winds, making it a bad time to be a twelve-meter (nearly forty-foot) tall snowman. Still, not everyone decided to keep warmly covered. Meanwhile, back indoors, the Big Brother racism is now causing all kinds of headaches for international diplomats, and Londonist got into......

Christopher St. Cavish, motorcycling philanthropist...

Interfax is reporting that starting Sept. 1, all mobile phone and Xiaolingtong subscribers in Shanghai will have to register their numbers with their legal names. This directive from the Shanghai Communications Administration and the Shanghai Public Security Bureau extends to all current and future customers. All SIM cards purchased after Sept. 1 will require real-name registration and all pre-existing subscribers will be given three months to add names to their accounts at designated locations across......

Shhhhhh! Be quiet. Yes, you. Now listen. Closely. Hear that whirring sound? It's probably nothing to worry about -- or it could be the surveillance camera that has been installed to watch you. According to a story in the Toronto-based newspaper The Globe and Mail, Shanghai has an estimated 200,000 spy cameras installed and another 200,000 are on the way within the next five years: Until recently, China's Communist regime could control its population with......