A West Los Angeles man and the Russian national who he married last year were arrested today by federal immigration officials after being charged with marriage fraud for allegedly entering into a sham marriage so the woman could obtain documents that would allow her to remain in the United States.

When "Sweetgal," a 29-year-old British Muslim from central England, began looking for a new husband last year, at first she didn't know where to turn.

The answer, it turned out, was on the Internet.

She'd been married once--a union arranged by her parents--to a man from Pakistan. It lasted seven years and produced children but broke down due to cultural differences and she didn't want to go through a similar trauma again.

At the same time, being a respectful Muslim who wears hijab, she wasn't going to start "dating," and knew her parents would have to be involved in her new search in one way or another.

Over the past two years there has been a boom in the use of Web sites that introduce Muslim men and women, not for casual dating, but for those actively seeking traditional Muslim marriage.

AN EGYPTIAN blogger was jailed for four years yesterday after being convicted of insulting Islam and Egypt's president, Hosni Mubarak.

Abdel Karim Suleiman, 22, a former law student, was the first blogger to stand trial in Egypt for his internet writings. He was charged in connection with eight articles written since 2004.

After a nearly yearlong ban, China has eased restrictions on the access to the English-language site of Wikipedia, the reader-edited online encyclopedia. However, the access to the Chinese version of the site remains "spotty," a Chinese-American researcher said in his blog this week.

Once a simple rodeo for freaks, Burning Man has evolved into a high-tech desert fantasia

One of the questions that comes up quite a lot for us is the scale of the archive. There have now been over a million articles published since we began in 1997. We do sometimes get requests from members of the public who were quoted in stories a long time ago to have these references removed. The reasons can be as trivial such as they now find what they said embarrassing, or perhaps they have changed their view on the topic.

There have also been people convicted of a variety of offences who have asked us to take stories down, claiming that it is preventing them from getting on with their lives. Our response to these requests has generally been robust. We like to think of the large backlog of stories at the news website as equivalent to a newspaper archive. Every effort was made to ensure that the stories were accurate and reliable at the time of publication, and they remain in the archive for the record. If we start to alter this version of history, where on earth do we begin to draw the line?

Peter Hirshberg, Chairman of Technorati, lends an inside look at his expertise to the world blogging and how it has come to be. He shares how blogging has helped shape the internet in the global market today. He also speaks about the advances of the medium and how it has helped to shape not only the internet, but society today in everyday life.

Don't miss a second of it, click to view the webcast of Peter's remarks.

From the page:

-- Entering its second decade as a potent information technology, the internet is the subject of endless fascination, speculation and, at times, even consternation. In some scenarios, it is seen as the inexorable force that will render the printed page, the high-paid anchorperson, and the concept of an elite gatekeeper media obsolete. Yet at the same time, there are serious questions about whether online news can ever develop a business model that will enable it to support the kind of quality journalism that for now remains the near exclusive domain of the beleaguered old media. --

From the page:

-- In a state where protests are rare, John Aglionby sees a columnist inspire a small band of Singaporeans to take to the streets. --

From the page:

-- Efforts to remove the US government's historical stranglehold on the internet will kick off again today. --

From the page:

-- Afrinic is the regional registry for Africa whose aim is to "provide professional and efficient distribution of number resources to the African community, to support internet technology usage across the continent and strengthen self internet governance in Africa by encouraging a participative policy development." --

From the page:

-- China launched a campaign in February to "purify the environment" of the Internet and mobile communications, as the government continues to research monitoring technology and issue "admittance standards" for blogs, reports Chinese news agency Xinhua. --

From the page:

-- France, the country which invented the philosophy café, has just had another smart idea: the train of thought. From this week, passengers who book by internet on certain long-distance French trains can arrange to sit next to other passengers with similar interests. --

-- We've all heard about the "laws of attraction" -- but what about the laws of Internet dating? Online dating services and some of their users have been accused of committing fraud. Madeleine Brand speaks with Slate legal analyst Dahlia Lithwick about the regulations, if any, that govern Internet dating. --

-- If you created something that is used billions of times every day by millions of people, you might expect it to be around for a long time to come.

Yet Dr Paul Mockapetris, inventor of the net's Domain Name System (DNS), entertains few illusions about the longevity of his creation.

If ever your computer needs help finding out where a. com, .uk or any other website is on the net, the DNS is the system it consults for that address.

"I expect the DNS to be eventually replaced," he told the BBC News website.

"The internet is all perishable technology that going to get replaced or extended." --

-- A Japanese man received a life sentence yesterday for killing a 76-year-old man on behalf of the victim's son and grandson who had placed an order for his murder on the Internet. Naoya Katayama, 36, killed wheelchair-bound Tsutomu Nomoto by hitting him with a hammer, for which he was reportedly paid two million yen ($17,500).--

-- It began with an impassioned, 5,000-word letter on one of the country's most popular Internet bulletin boards from a husband denouncing a college student he suspected of having an affair with his wife. Immediately, hundreds joined in the attack.

"Let's use our keyboard and mouse in our hands as weapons," one person wrote, "to chop off the heads of these adulterers, to pay for the sacrifice of the husband."

Within days, the hundreds had grown to thousands, and then tens of thousands, with total strangers forming teams that hunted down the student, hounded him out of his university and caused his family to barricade themselves inside their home.

It was just the latest example of a growing phenomenon the Chinese call Internet hunting, in which morality lessons are administered by online throngs and where anonymous Web users come together to investigate others and mete out punishment for offenses real and imagined. --

-- A woman from Greater Manchester has become a victim of an internet scam in which hackers hijack computer files and blackmail owners to get them back.

Helen Barrow, a 40-year-old nurse from Rochdale, is believed to be one of the first victims of the con in the UK.

Criminals encrypt files with complex passwords, leaving a ransom note telling victims not to contact police.

Ms Barrow's note said that she would have to buy drugs from an online pharmacy to find out the password.

The new phenomenon, known as Ransomware, means victims cannot access any of the files stored in their My Documents folder. --

-- There's something about the feeling of anonymity on the Internet that can turn otherwise reasonable, pleasant people into complete blockheads. Given an open, free, global network to communicate, people use it to rant, rave, flame and complain. We've all done it.

But when YOU are the target of an insulting post or sharply-worded email, quite frankly, it can really suck. Today I've got some strategies for dealing with Internet Meanies: those faceless virtual bullies who take pleasure in shooting other people down from the safety of their keyboards. --

-- Imam Almamy Korobara is reaching out beyond his remote corner of Mali to connect with millions of Muslims and religious leaders worldwide using the web of linked computers called the Internet, thanks to information technology donated by the U.S. government.

Korobara is imam of the Grand Mosque of Djenné, one of Africa's oldest towns. His reputation as an influential religious and spiritual leader now is being spread worldwide after the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) recently provided him with a computer and one year of Internet service. --

-- An initiative by French MPs to introduce a general "downloading fee" that would allow consumers to legally source whatever music or films they want from the Internet is to run into heavy government opposition this week. --

-- Is it a virtual hangout for millions of American teenagers, like a sprawling electronic shopping plaza, or a magnet for sexual predators and pornographers?

MySpace.com is a bit of both, say Rhode Island education officials who have banned the fast-growing teen social networking website from 80 percent of their schools out of concern was putting children at risk. --