--Mayor Menino hops on a bike in honor of Bike Week. [Boston Globe] --Local residents with family in China react to the news of the recent earthquake. [Boston Herald] --House Speaker Sal Di Masi is mad as hell at the suggestion that his ethics are a little shady, and he's not taking it anymore. [Boston Globe] --Two recipients of kidneys from a homeless man infected with LMCV, a rodent virus, have died. [Boston Globe] --Parts......

This is Massachusetts, right? But early this morning a 2.5 earthquake hit towns west of Boston, including Littleton and Ayer. Betsy Levinson at Wicked Local spoke with Littleton police dispatch Supervisor Tim Bemis, who described residents' response to the shaking: "It sounded like a plane crash on 495, or a truck had crashed into their home." WCVB reported that this is the second earthquake in the area this month and that a 1.8 quake affected......

Charlton Heston's Apocalypse runs Friday, August 17, through Monday, August 20, at the Brattle Theatre. Check the Brattle's website for showtimes. While we're all worried about global warming wiping humanity off the map, the Brattle is paying tribute to cinema's biggest disaster magnet – Charlton Heston. Everyone knows and appreciates Heston's scenery-chewing in the classics Planet of the Apes, The Omega Man, and Soylent "It's people! It's people!" Green, which the Brattle is showing......

Londonist are starting to think their city is getting just a little bit too expensive, when even Christian Slater can't afford to go out there. And there's no escaping, as local singer Lily Allen discovered when she was barred entry to the US. The British mapping agency caused further bad karma, by blocking a 3-D representation of London in Google Earth. But the smiles returned to Londonist's faces as they interviewed Baroness von Reichardt,......

This week ended with the launch of the seventh and final Harry Potter installation. But while the world was consumed with Pottermania, it's important to remember that there were more serious things going on in the world, too - two of them in -Ist cities. Sampaist was shocked when a passenger jet crashed into the center of Sao Paulo, killing at least 200 people. The airplane, an Airbus A320, skidded off the runway at the......

Sunday. Usually, a quiet, contemplative day in the Blogosphere. But not here in the Ist-a-Verse. Nonono! Just look below and see all of the wild and crazy stuff our staffs are up to. In Austin, bands are beginning to confirm for SXSW and the rumor mill is up and running. Good thing, too, because we all know how much Austinites love live performances. Austin also found itself in the national spotlight, with Longhorn Legend......

After the infamous tunnel collapse of this past July, one could argue that East Boston had it bad. Being an island, there is no feasible way for residents to get into the city without going through a tunnel or over a bridge, unless one considers a detour through Chelsea and Somerville "feasible". However, some comfort was taken in the fact that the Sumner and Callahan, built in 1961 and 1934, respectively, had existed for decades......

SFist commeters pose for before and aftershocks when the mayor commemorates a 1906 earthquake...at 4:30 in the morning. A hot tip on the Chronicle vending machines comes in and the SFist war correspondent risks life and limb to post this dispatch from the frontlines. Houstonist announces their new Cops spinoff "World's Funniest Tazer Videos" and the possible cancellation of their pervs' "World's Grossest Bathroom Videos" and PBS trains cams on cows at, uhg, Mootube. Also,......

Bostonist spent a long weekend with our friends at Seattlest in their fair city. It was our first trip out to the Pacific Northwest’s very own city of neighborhoods. We were looking for similarities with Boston when we were there. The obvious similarity hangs high above their downtown: we’ve got the Citgo Sign, they’ve got the Pepsi Sign. Unlike our Citgo, their Pepsi changes the neon every time the Pepsi logo changes, we were told......

Bostonist knows better to think that most of our dear readers are likely to take a jaunt to Nicaragua's capital anytime soon: Unlike, say, Montreal or the Cape, it's neither close nor pretty, and in terms of tourism, it has precious little to commend it, since most of the historical buildings and the civic center were completely destroyed by an earthquake in 1972. (Did we mention it is an absolutely terrible place to go with......