Sad news. The day after the global "day of action" in support of Iranian bloggers Arash and Mojtaba, Arash Sigarchi was sentenced to 14 years in prison (via Politech). He's charged with espionage, and insulting both Ayatollahs Khomenei and Khamenei, among other "crimes" against the Iranian state.

If all this talk about Iranian blogs has whetted your appetite there's an excellent article on Alternet by Zack Pelta-Heller called Building Blogs about this (via Crooked Timbre). Two-thirds of Iranians are under 30 years old and many are educated. It's one of the main reasons observers think blogs have become so widespread in Iran. Latest counts are at 100,000 Persian blogs, according to Pelta-Heller.