Young Mayor Runs Afoul of Human Flesh Search Engines

Just days after being appointed as mayor of Yicheng city in Hubei province, and being hailed in the media as “China’s youngest mayor,” 28-year-old Zhou Senfeng has fallen prey to China’s so-called human flesh search engines, online amateur sleuths who try to dig up personal details of people who somehow incur their wrath or distrust.

Shanghai Building Collapses, Nearly Intact

In the weekend’s bizarrest news, a nearly finished, newly constructed building in Shanghai toppled over, killing one worker.

Yemenia Says Plane Crashed Over the Indian Ocean

Yemen’s national airline said one of its planes with 153 passengers and crew on board crashed today near the Comoros Islands over the Indian Ocean.

Iraq steps into precarious but sovereign unknown

Iraq takes a major step toward reasserting its sovereignty on Tuesday when U.S. combat troops hand urban areas over to its relatively untested police and soldiers.

Beijing Expands Yuan Use for Trade

Companies in Hong Kong will be allowed to use the yuan to settle trades with their counterparts in five major Chinese cities as soon as next month, monetary authorities in mainland China and Hong Kong said.

Farewell to the rugged look as new male beauties sweep all before them

(The Guardian)
By Amelia Hill
Something strange is happening to our leading men – they are fading, blurring and losing their edge. Visit the cinema or turn on the television and you’ll see an endless string of interchangeable heroes whose unique selling point is that they don’t have one.
It seems that the days are largely gone when [...]

Life’s a gambol

(The Guardian)
By Dan Pearson
It has been an incredible year for buttercups. They will always do their best when moisture is on tap, and with last year’s damp summer behind them the hedgerows flashed gold and hay fields shone like a childhood memory. You don’t want Ranunculus repens in your borders however, as they have the [...]

Michael Martin, Subway Graffiti Artist Iz the Wiz, Is Dead at 50

(NY Times)
By William Grimes

Michael Martin, known as Iz the Wiz, was a prolific embellisher of New York subway cars, including this one painted in 1982.
In the 1970s and ’80s, chances were good that anyone traveling the New York subways rode at least once in a car emblazoned with “Iz the Wiz.” Cryptic but euphonious, often [...]

Kobe’s Next Conquest: China

NBA Star Starts Charity in Bid to Raise Profile; ‘One-Man State Department’

SciPhone Dream G2 Android charger is best ever

(Engadget)

One of our favorite intellectual property rips of recent months is without a doubt the SciPhone Dream G2 from China. Having completely missed the point of Google’s open-source OS being, well, open-source and thus free for SciPhone’s use, the company instead chose to hack the G2’s “proprietory” OS to look like Android. The charger, however, [...]