What a horrific story: two friends, one in China and the other in Canada, were chatting on webcam when suddenly a man knocked on her door and asked to use her phone. From CNN: "Toronto Police on Monday identified the student as Qian (Necole) Liu of Beijing. She was talking early Friday morning to a male friend from home when a man allegedly knocked on her door, asking to use her phone, police said in a news release. The online witness said he saw Liu and the unknown man struggle for a time before the attacker turned off her laptop, the news release said. The friend in China then started a desperate bid to find out what happened, CNN-affiliate CTV reported. Ten hours later, police arrived at the basement apartment to find Liu's body, naked from the waist down. Her laptop was missing." more ›

Yet another swine flu patient has been found in Beijing, making it the third case to be discovered this week and China's fifth case overall. The latest patient is a 21-year-old Chinese Canadian male who came over from Toronto. He arrived in Beijing on May 16 and sought treatment for a fever on the 19th. It seems like there really is an uptick in H1N1 discoveries recently, which makes us really worry about our plans to head out of the country this summer. It also brings up the question: how many more cases before we stop reporting them individually and start in bulk? Source: Economic Observer Online more ›

• Gothamist found that an explosive set off outside the Times Square army recruiting center may be similar to five past bombings in New York City.
• Seattlest worried when severed right feet and bottles of rat poison started washing up on local beaches.
• Shanghaiist was surprised by Bjork's rooting for Tibetan independence at her concert (see video), and the political fallout has only just begun.
• SFist debated the merits of new bronze plaques that will be placed in locations where San Francisco's homeless have died.
• DCist was obliged to respond to the worst Washington Post Outlook column ever published, in which conservative writer Charlotte Allen tried to make the case that women are dumb.
• LAist found Satan's ice cream truck trolling the streets, and they recorded the music.
• Some crafty Torontoist readers didn't like the dearth of ski hills in downtown Toronto, so they just built one of their own on their deck and (of course) recorded a video of them all taking turns on it.
• Bostonist knows the city's subway and bus system, the MBTA, has problems. So does this 17-year-old who submitted a report and told the MBTA brass how to fix it.
• Phillyist explored the possibility of an Ivy League prostitute, while their commenters debated the most ethical approach to proving or debunking the story.
• Londonist spent a little too much time looking at airbrushed operatic private parts, and enjoyed an enlightening comment from someone who was there. more ›

All this month (that would be March), the photography of Hong Kong artist Norm Yip will be on display not on the walls of a fancy-schmancy gallery on Moganshan Road, but on the meandering walls of Shanghai Studio. more ›

http://seattlest.com/2008/02/28/foo_fighters_da.php">announced his presidential bid.

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href="http://torontoist.com/2008/02/phototo_snowbal.php">photographing a big, organized snowball fight.

Feeling a little "under the weather" (hah!) from all the snow we're getting? Those rapscallions over at Void have just the answer for you. On Saturday night, they're bringing respected house music veteran Jason Hodges to drop some bombs at The Shelter. more ›

So if you’ve ever fancied travelling from I’m a hot dashing dinosaur (Shanghai Indoor Stadium) to Thoroughly Hawaiian Satanists (Shanghai South Railway Station) to Drab Penguin (Nanpu Bridge) now is your chance! more ›

This coming Saturday, Antidote will be hosting Knifehandchop from Toronto and Sulumi from Beijing. Antidote organiser Michael Ohlsson aka DJ Ozone explains why he invited the two DJ's:These guys are producers, not just DJs. I've always been interested in music that is current, innovative, cutting-edge ... but also accessible. Not just experimental noise. And I love to share this new music with people. The music that Sulumi and KnifeHandChop are doing is very different from... more ›

China's aviation authority, citing safety concerns, has announced plans to scale back flights at overstretched Beijing airports and ban the creation of new airlines before 2010. more ›

Jakob Montrasio points us to a most unbelievable ranking of the world's top 25 cities with skyscrapers published by the German magazine Spiegel: more ›

Happy Holidays! more ›

Before we begin, we'd like to extend our deepest sympathies to the family of James Kim. We are not, by any means, trying to discount that tragedy by juxtaposing posts about the Kims with more light-hearted posts. It's the nature of doing a compilation such as this one: we're trying to give a full slice of the goings-on in the Ist-a-Verse: the good, the bad, and the ugly. more ›

As we all know, there is no internet censorship in China. However, if you've attempted to access one of the estimated 19,032 websites that are inaccessible in China, then you may have experienced some frustration to that end. It's not simply those of you who have been deemed a cultist, separatists, splittist, or attempt to read illicit material from rogue, upstart news organizations, but China's filtration system is a dynamic, evolving beast that smothers forbidden material faster than Prozac. more ›

Torontoist has some awesome, cutting edge news: A movie is being made about a gay hockey player - filmmakers even got approval from the NHL and the Toronto Maple Leafs! Also awesome: Toronto's "Do the Sneeze Sleeve Campaign". And most awesome is this dreamy photograph of Toronto's skyline in fog. more ›

think. It just made us wonder: if it were up to the -ist-a-verse, what would we be voting for? more ›

Austinist was in an entertainment state of mind as they covered the dickens out of the Austin Film Festival, depicted all the Big 12 football coaches as South Park characters, and interviewed Jose Gonzalez. more ›

As fall settles in and another calendar page gets turned, thoughts turn from bbq's and vacations to holidays and the realization that '06 is coming to an end. With all that going on, with change in the air, we wonder what is it that made that makes the -ists ponder? more ›

Even though we are way way past school age, we still get a little melancholy at the close of summer. Fortunately, our friends across the -ist network know that the shenanigans don't need to end just because the big yellow buses are back on the roads. So, grab your sunscreen and your favorite hangover cure, as we take a tour of end of summer fun from -ist cities all over the damn place. more ›

You know who's going to be upset about those Bikini Bandits? The Houston school system. Houstonist also reports on some redevelopment shenanigans over a landmark theater. more ›

Phillyist keeps it fresh by getting a new motto, learning to prioritize, and taking in an experimental indie rock show. more ›

It goes without saying that China is a country of great contrasts and irony, and we were reminded of that fact with regards to sex and sex education. more ›

Torontoist (where it's 75 degrees F as of this writing) is keeping things cool this summer, nudity and blood optional. Less cool are the comments in this post about a hipster auctioning off crap so she can buy a house. And no summer would be complete without the twin guilty pleasures of crap dining and crap TV: get them both with Torontoist's interview with "Rockstar: Supernova" star Lucas Rossi and a look at the safety ratings of some of Toronto's favorite greasy spoons. more ›

Torontoist immediately wins our heart by using the word "Jackass" in a headline. In fact, we love their use of it so much that we're going to use it as much as possible throughout this post. For example, it looks like there are Toronto-area jackasses besides those who misuse the sidewalk: look at the crap on sale on Toronto's craigslist. But it looks like Toronto doesn't contain the kind of jackasses who pee in public pools, as the issue never came up when they interviewed the creators of art installations in their public wading pools. more ›

Sampaist is on the scene in São Paulo beginning this week to become the only ist south of the Equator. Editor Leandro M. Pinto leads the paulistanos down there. more ›

LAist is flashing a sad peace out to their editor Carolyn Kellogg with one hand and bumping knuckles with their new head typist L.A. blogger king Tony Pierce with the other. more ›

The week starts out right when a sucker punch on the field lands Chicagoist in the middle of a Sox/Cubs throwdown and the fists continue to fly in the comments. Despite suburban resident Ms. Pinney's best little try no books will be banned anytime soon and the El is really really gross. more ›

LAist has so much fun this week! They go to E3, where they overhear the timeless remark "Man, this is where nerdy girls get laid." Is that a promise? They also give us this week's best CDs and make us realize that LA is the best place to use Zillow. more ›

Londonist prepares a Happy Birthday bath for Buddah this week and then things get all cliched. A madman goes on a rampage while axe-wiedling and London's mayor warns an American diplomat to avoid the kitchen if the heat bothers him so much. more ›