Blogging can be hazardous to your health

From xkcd.com

Oh, sure: blogging is relatively safe, especially when compared to skydiving (which I also survived, at least until my wife found out about it.)

Still, the news today from China and Saudi Arabia casts a different light on this (presumably humorous) cartoon. The cartoon predates the following stories, so perhaps there are now four casualties. Read on:

China blogger beaten to death

(CNN) -- Authorities have fired an official in central China after city inspectors reportedly beat to death a man who filmed their confrontation with villagers, China's Xinhua news agency reports.

... On Monday Wei Wenhua, a 41-year-old construction company executive, happened on a confrontation in the central Chinese province of Hubei between city inspectors and villagers protesting over the dumping of waste near their homes.

A scuffle developed when residents tried to prevent trucks from unloading the rubbish, Xinhua said.

When Wei took out his cell phone to record the protest, more than 50 municipal inspectors turned on him, attacking him for five minutes, Xinhua said. Wei was dead on arrival at a Tianmen hospital, the report said.

... An international press freedom group, Reporters Without Borders, protested the killing.

"Wei is the first 'citizen journalist' to die in China because of what he was trying to film," the group said in a statement.

US concerned for Saudi blogger

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Bush administration has brought its concerns about the detention of a well-known blogger to the Saudi Arabian government at "a relatively senior level," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Thursday.

... Fouad al-Farhan, 32, was arrested December 10 "because he violated the regulations of the kingdom," a spokesman for the Interior Ministry told CNN Wednesday.

In an e-mail posted on his Web site since his arrest, however, al-Farhan told friends that he faced arrest for his support of 10 reform advocates the Saudi government accuses of supporting terrorism.

In the e-mail, al-Farhan said a senior Interior Ministry official promised he would remain in custody for three days at most if he agreed to sign a letter of apology.

Al-Farhan, who blogs at alfarhan.org, is one of the few Saudi Web commentators who uses his own name, according to the U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists.