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from Changing China:

Where next for the torch?

Preparations for the Beijing Olympics have understandably taken a back seat to the tragedy in Sichuan.

On Sunday, it was announced that the torch relay would be suspended from Monday to Wednesday to mark three days of national mourning.

The question officials at the Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG) returned to wrestling with after observing the three-minute silence at 2.28pm today is what should happen when it restarts?

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the torch was scheduled to visit Shanghai. Can a torch relay that is supposed to visit all of China's provinces really skip the country's financial capital (and venue for several Olympic soccer matches)? Will Sichuan, and most particularly the city of Mianyang, really be ready to host the flame in mid-June?     

from Photographers Blog:

Why I became a news photographer – continued

I covered the aftermath of an earthquake years ago as a new-comer to the business. I was living in Rome and we had felt the quake as it struck a moutainous region of Southern Italy just before 8 o'clock on a Sunday evening in November.

It was first light by the time we got to the village of Balvano. As, I drove down into the valley, the village was blanketed by cloud. There was no sound, there were no lights but as we passed through the cloud, we became aware of an awful noise - the terrible wailing of the survivors.

from MediaFile:

Breaking news, Twitter style

News of a possible explosion rippled through the popular online service Twitter on Tuesday, in a preview of what's to come in the realm of breaking news and citizen journalism. Twitter is a so-called microblogging site that allows users to send and receive short messages.

At about 1:37 pm, software developer Dave Winer asked the Twitterverse: "Explosion in Falls Church, VA?" (Perhaps not coincidentally, Winer is a well-known blogger and podcasting evangelist). A flurry of posts, or "tweets," followed, as users reported rumbles as far away as Alexandria.