Shanghaiist, by accident, realized today that Google News loads just fine -- without using a proxy -- here in Shanghai. We are no longer in the habit of visiting the site, because it's been blocked for quite some time, so we don't know for sure how long the site has been unblocked. One Shanghaiist friend even said Google News "is up to five times faster than any other site I try and visit." So make use of it now -- because you never know how long it will last.

If it does get blocked again, though, you can now just simply subscribe to the Google News RSS feeds, which debuted this week. (Just in time, too -- the hack we had been relying on finally went kaput.) Like Yahoo! News, Google offers RSS feeds for search strings. Here are the feed links for "China" and "Shanghai."

Speaking of Yahoo! News, its seems to have gotten over its earlier troubles. So all is eerily well (unless, of course, you are on Blogspot or Typepad or if your name is Running Dog and so on and so on.)

Now only one question remains: How much longer will Google News remain in Beta mode?

Also in Shanghaiist:
Yahoo! News blocked in China?