almost all BBC News pages and Hotmail are blocked for me today. not good. i have work e.mails to send! is something big happening again?

Just keep refreshing the page, and changing browsers every once in a while. Eventually it will come up, not a clue if there is something important going on today.

My BBC is working fine over here.

There's only one related news on the BBC frontpage quoting how current heavy smogs are beneficial in deflecting aerial missiles.

How do you guys survive without a vpn...

mPRin because VPNs are not always reliable, affordable, and having to turn it on and off all the time is pretty frustrating.

I never turn mine off, but then I never use Chinese websites. You're right, it is pretty expensive I guess. Definitely worth it though!

No problems here, either.

based on what I read in Canada today, there was something significant that happened in Beijing, but I probably shouldn't be specific here...

I view the BBC website daily and occassionally have problems accessing pages, but nothing seems blocked for me yesterday or today...

the problems with the BBC website was mostly yesterday morning and (using a VPN) there were at 3 stories on there about China at the time so I get that. Hotmail was blocked most of the day both at home (in the north) and at work (downtown).

the story about the toy wolf in HK was pretty funny but I can see why some found it worthy of censorship!