Bloggers

Perhaps it started during the Civil War, when they took opposite sides. For whatever reason, Maryland and Virginia have a rivalry as long and deep as the Potomac River that divides them, and control of which they've fought over. "Given the ideological split," lobbyist Charlie Davis once told The Post, "God probably got it right putting the Potomac where it is. " "Virginia is for Lovers" was met by "Maryland is for Crabs. " Virginia welcomes "y'all"; Maryland calls you "hon.

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly attributed a quote to Morgan Lane Arnold, the daughter of slain businessman Dennis Lane. A paragraph based on the erroneous attribution has been removed. This version has been corrected. A prominent Ellicott City blogger and businessman was stabbed to death by his daughter's 19-year-old boyfriend, who plotted with the 14-year-old girl to kill him so the two could run away together, Howard County police said Friday.

An international consortium of nonbelievers is planning rallies Thursday (April 25) outside Bangladeshi embassies and consulates to demand the release of several Bangladeshi bloggers who were arrested on charges of blasphemy. The rallies are in support of four Bangladeshi men arrested earlier this month for "hurting religious sentiments," a crime tied to an 1860 law that can carry up to 10 years in jail. The four men — all bloggers — staged a sit-in at a public square demanding a ban on the country's largest Islamic...

The Chinese people would like President Obama to stop an oil refinery from being built in southern China, endorse sweet-flavored tofu and reopen an 18-year-old criminal probe of a poisoning case. And while he's at it, if he wouldn't mind mobilizing U.S. troops to liberate Hong Kong, as well as China as a whole, that'd be great, too. In a strange and diplomatically awkward turn of events, Chinese citizens have flocked to the White House's Web site over the past week to lodge formal petitions, many of them directed against their government.

MOSCOW — A Russian blogger was told Tuesday that he is under criminal investigation for inciting riots with comments on demonstrations against Vladimir Putin, raising fears that the authorities intend to restrict the Internet, where the protest movement was inspired and organized. The Internet here has been robust and free so far, in contrast to television, the source of most Russians' information and the conduit for what officials ensure is a relentlessly pro-Putin message.

With all the controversies raging around mommy bloggers and their product reviews and FTC looking into the practice (for all bloggers, not just moms), I did a quick video interview with Lisa Stone , CEO of BlogHer earlier this week. Among the points she discussed:?No point in having one universal standard for bloggers?Importance of separating advertising from editorial?Self regulation efforts?Effect on marketers?Role of press Related Can 'Good Blogging Seal Of Approval' Help Mommy Bloggers Avoid The...

Picturesurf , a new Wordpress plugin that allows bloggers to quickly build photo galleries, has launched to the public. Instead of having to waste time cropping and resizing thumbnail photos (and then embedding them into annoying HTML tables), Picturesurf allows users to simply select and upload a number of photos from their desktop, which are then automatically resized and arranged in standard CSS. The plugin is available in the WordPress plugin directory, or you can grab it at the Picturesurf homepage ,...

-- The Federal Trade Commission on Monday took steps to make product information and online reviews more accurate for consumers, regulating blogging for the first time and mandating that testimonials reflect typical results. The FTC will require that writers on the Web clearly disclose any freebies or payments they get from companies for reviewing their products. The commission also said advertisers featuring testimonials that claim dramatic results cannot hide behind disclaimers that the results aren't...

Supporters of a Saudi Arabian blogger who has been held in jail for the past two months are planning a rally today in Washington, D.C. to draw attention to his cause. Fouad Al-Farhan, 32,was arrested in early Decemberafter posting blog entries critical of the Saudi Arabian government and drawing attention to a group of civil rights activistsarrestedlast year on terrorism charges. The American Islamic Congress (AIC), a nonprofit civil rights organization, is calling for avigilat 1 p.m....

There's a reason that brands love mommy bloggers. With more moms turning to the web for parenting advice, camaraderie and product recommendations?a favorable review from the likes of bloggers like Dooce , Melinda Roberts or even a less-known mom with a blog can translate directly to an uptick in sales. But with the FTC trying to tackle the issue of "truth" in social media advertising, the relationship between brands and mommy bloggers is coming under scrutiny . Nearly 80 percent of moms that blog...

BALTIMORE — A Baltimore blogger who broadcast his standoff with police has pleaded guilty to a weapons charge. Frank James MacArthur, who broadcast his negotiations with police surrounding his home in December, pleaded guilty Wednesday to possession of a short barreled shot gun. He was sentenced to three years in prison with all but six months suspended. When law-enforcement officers tried to serve a warrant for a probation violation stemming from a 2009 gun case, MacArthur remained...

An international consortium of nonbelievers is planning rallies Thursday (April 25) outside Bangladeshi embassies and consulates to demand the release of several Bangladeshi bloggers who were arrested on charges of blasphemy. The rallies are in support of four Bangladeshi men arrested earlier this month for "hurting religious sentiments," a crime tied to an 1860 law that can carry up to 10 years in jail. The four men — all bloggers — staged a sit-in at a public square demanding a ban on the country's...

KIROV, Russia — The Russian opposition's most charismatic leader goes on trial here Wednesday, a confrontation with the potential to weaken the democracy movement for years to come — or inject it with new energy and purpose. The embezzlement case against Alexei Navalny , the 36-year-old lawyer who won a following as an anti-corruption blogger and became a hero of last year's street protests, is widely considered a test of how harshly President Vladimir Putin intends to...

A colleague of the late conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart is asking a federal appeals court to throw out a defamation case brought against him by former government employee Shirley Sherrod, saying the lawsuit violates the blogger's right to freedom of speech. Sherrod was ousted from her job as an Agriculture Department rural-development official in 2010 after Breitbart posted an edited video of Sherrod, who is black, supposedly making racist remarks. She sued Breitbart, his employee Larry...

When you're covering the selection of a new pope from your parents' East Coast basement, there are challenges. First, there is the whir of the laundry room three feet away as you're trying to get through on your cellphone to your cardinal sources in Rome. Then there's the issue of spotting the white smoke that will spew from the Sistine Chapel chimney when the cardinals inside make their pick. It's not that there aren't benefits to working from your family's basement. When Rocco...

CARACAS, Venezuela — Yoani Sanchez, the celebrated Cuban dissident blogger, says she still has to steel her nerves when she prepares to write yet another vignette about the boredom, grim despair and hardship that mark life in Communist Cuba. After all, dissidents have often wound up in jail. Yet over the past six years, Sanchez, 37, has regularly uploaded posts on her Generation Y blog that are then read by half a million people, most of them outside the island. ...

Plenty of people blog for free, but when you are blogging for a multi-billion-dollar media conglomerate like AOL (a unit of Time Warner) at least you can expect a steady paycheck. Or not. Recent belt-tightening at AOL is hitting its network of bloggers, many of whom are being asked to curtail their posts or stop altogether. Others are being asked to post for free, and are actually doing so in the hopes that they might save their jobs come August. As one AOL blogger told us last week: . . . our two biggest sites...

RINO-hunting, the long-popular political sport that morphed in 2008 into a sort of hysteria-driven obsession , lately has become a suicide mission. RINO, of course, refers to Republicans In Name Only and is the pejorative term used against those who fail to march in lockstep with the so-called conservative base. I used "so-called" because, though the hard-right faction of the party tends to be viewed as The Base, this isn't necessarily so. My guess is there are now more RINOs than those who, though evangelical in their zeal,...

BEIJING — Two months after exposing a scandal involving sex tapes, blackmail and lucrative government contracts, which resulted in 11 officials losing their jobs, blogger Zhu Ruifeng received a surprise visit from Chinese security officials Sunday night. "They are standing outside my door right now, knocking and even kicking the door, telling me to open it," he said in a frantic phone call to a reporter. As he talked, men could be heard shouting in the background. "I think they're coming to...