"So far, the world has heard from the young man and the cameraman in the famous Bus Uncle episode. But who cares about them? The world wants to know about the Bus Uncle himself.

BEIJING (AP) -- A Chinese activist was struck by an assailant and left paralyzed after meeting with police to discuss an interview he gave on German television, a human rights group and a German broadcaster said Tuesday.

The attack on Fu Xiancai, a critic of the government's treatment of people displaced by the Three Gorges dam project, highlighted the risks Chinese rights campaigners face.

One Man Bandwidth tells us about the first foreigner in China... no word yet on how many Viking longships he was charged for a bowl of rice.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge have done some analysis on how the PRC?s Great Firewall (GFW) handles the ?blocking? or interruption of web page loading midstream when it detects sensitive keywords related to the day after June 3 and certain religious groups. What they discovered is quite surprising, because it indicates that the mechanism is simple, clever, but at the same time, quite straighforward to circumvent. Read on for a layman?s explanation of the technical paper.

ESWN gives his opinion on the relevance of Hong Kong's July 1st march for democracy/universal suffrage. The post goes off of the insightful commentary of Chinese blogger Charles Mok (reprinted in translation) that illustrates how the march has become a dilluted mess of social interest groups all trying to be heard.

A group representing more than 1,400 music companies in 73 countries has said it is preparing to sue Yahoo! China over allegations that it links users to Web sites offering pirated music.

Via Associated Press:
A fire ignited explosives Friday at a home in northern China, killing at least 43 people, many of whom had rushed to the scene to battle the flames, a government news agency said.

From the LA Times: "A Chinese businessman is executed for a murder plot, but the big story may be shady deals and Beijing's bid to make a grim example of him."

The author tells the story of Yuan Baojing's rise to wealth and the murder that led to his execution by lethal injection.

A funny, and on-key letter that any expat in China can relate to. Going out to all family members back home who have yet to realize that living in China is a perfectly reasonably thing to do - and we don't have to "return to the real world" if we don't want to.

Dan at Talk Talk China writes an excellent post about how when dealing with Chinese people, usually you're going to get screwed, but they're not to blame... you are. Just read the fine print.