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BEIJING After weeks of Internet-fueled rumors suggesting fissures in the top leadership ranks, Chinese authorities struck back this weekend, closing 16 Web sites and arresting at least six people in a broad crackdown on the freewheeling world of cyberspace.

Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, said in a dispatch late Friday that the Web sites were closed, and the unnamed individuals detained, for fabricating or disseminating online rumors. For the past two weeks, the Internet has been filled with rumors of an internal power struggle after the largely unexplained March 15 ouster of the popular provincial Communist Party chief Bo Xilai.

Xinhua also said Saturday that the two most popular Twitter-like microblogging sites, weibo.com run by Sina and t. qq run by Tencent, had suspended their comment functions, after they were punished for allowing rumors to spread. The suspension of the user comments function was said to last until next Tuesday.

The State Council Information Office, which announced the new moves, said it took action against the sites for spreading rumors of military vehicles entering Beijing and something wrong going on in Beijing.

The unsubstantiated rumors included reports of a coup in Beijing, and gunshots being fired near the Zhongnanhai leadership compound. They were quickly dismissed as fabricated but still spread rapidly in the absence of much official information. Chinas censorship authorities immediately began blocking certain search terms, such as coup and gunshots. But this weekends actions suggested that a broader effort was now underway to rein in the Internet.

Also on Saturday, the government announced that since mid-February, 1,065 people had been arrested, and 3,177 Web sites shut down, in a sweeping Internet crackdown called Spring Breeze that it said was aimed at stopping Internet-based crime such as counterfeiting, smuggling and identify theft.

The government said about 208,000 harmful online messages had been deleted, and 70 Internet companies had received administrative punishment, including some it did not say how many that had been shut down.

Xinhua referred to the crackdown as an effort to cleanse cyberspace.

In the past two years, the microblogging sites have emerged as an explosively-popular new free speech platform in China, surpassing the heavily censored traditional media as the main source of news and indeed rumors for tens of millions of Internet users, called Netizens.

The Communist authorities have alternately tried to co-opt the new technology with government departments and party chiefs setting up their own microblogging accounts while also seeking to suppress the relatively open discussion of topics once considered taboo.

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Amid rumors of unrest, China cracks down on the Internet

30-03-2012 11:06 Need a refresher on onsite SEO? Not even sure what onsite SEO means? This is the webinar for you. Although we spend a lot of time talking about how links are the most important part of improving rankings, it doesn't mean that onsite SEO isn't important. In fact, we have seen that small changes to title tags and improved density of target keywords can help a website move up in the rankings. But there are not any silver bullets to onsite SEO. It really comes down to picking good keyword targets, making sure those keywords exist on the page and consistently updating content over time. In this webinar we also talk about some of the tools that can help identify potential keyword targets as well as how to find pages for internal links.

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"Say what?," a column that offers an insider's view of Montclair and goes behind the scenes of its politics, this week talks about the odd couple of Nia Gill and Montclair Councilman Roger Terry; how we kept Wellmont Theatre rave attendees warm; The Jackson 5's fundraiser; and Tom Moloughney's electric-car meet next month.

TIMES FILE PHOTO

We're waiting to see if state Sen. Nia Gill and Montclair At-Large Councilman Roger Terry will be perfect together on the same ticket in the June primary. Gill is running for deceased Congressman Donald Payne Sr.'s 10th District seat, while Terry would be 'bracketed' with her as an Essex County Sheriff candidate.

STAFF PHOTO BY ADAM ANIK

Skimpy neon-colored attire was the dress code for Thursday's rave event at the Wellmont Theatre.

Who'd a thunk it: Roger Terry and Nia Gill on the same ticket.

Well, it's not official yet. We guess we'll have to wait until Monday to see if Montclair At-Large Councilman Terry really wants to run for sheriff in Essex County, riding alongside Gill.

This week Terry paid a visit to the Essex County Clerk's Office in Newark, where he picked up petitions to run as sheriff in the June Primary Election. Terry, a former Montclair deputy police chief, has until 4 p.m. Monday to turn in petitions with 100 valid signatures to County Clerk Chris Durkin.

Sources said that Terry is teaming up with Gill, a Montclair resident and Democratic state senator for the 34th District, to be "bracketed' with her on the ballot in June. Gill, who is running for the late Congressman Donald Payne's 10th District seat, presumably, believes she has a better shot of getting votes if she has more than one candidate on her line on the ballot.

Much as we like Terry, who opted not to run for re-election on the Township Council, he and Gill have a Herculean task ahead. In the primary, they would be pitted against two candidates who have the imprimatur of the Essex "Dem" organization. We're talking about Newark Councilman Donald Payne Jr., who is running for his deceased dad's congressional seat, and incumbent Sheriff Armando Fontoura.

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Say what? Roger and Nia, clothing the Wellmont rave refugees, and the Jackson 5

In October 1992, nearly 1,000 music fans were arrested at a rave in Milwaukee's Third Ward, sparking a controversy about electronic dance music and its purported influence on young people. In those days, DJs spun records imported from Europe as crowds in warehouses danced until sunrise, glow sticks raised.

After the raid, promotional word about raves spread quietly. Flyers led to a hotline number, then a recorded message, then a secret meeting spot, where you'd get a map to a far-flung barn or campsite. The stealth gave the movement a thrilling quality. But as the media hyped the dangers designer drugs and fire hazards musical trends changed, sending EDM deep into the underground

Twenty years later, you can still attend a "rave" in Wisconsin, but it will be easy to find. A promoter will tweet about it, and it will take place at a public venue like the Alliant Energy Center, where on April 13, the electronic artist Bassnectar will crank out party bangers and inventive remixes of tunes by dance-pop darling Ellie Goulding and gypsy punks Gogol Bordello.

Many of the genre's visual elements are the same as they were in the 1990s, but they're bigger and brighter, with laser lights, fog and projected images that make mouths gape as thousands of bodies writhe to the rhythms of dubstep, electro house and other varieties of EDM. If you go to the Bassnectar show, look for a crowd writhing ecstatically in a stew of bleeps and bloops, waving their hands amid a miasma of confetti.

Dance till dawn

EDM's popularity is booming. After performing mash-ups at UW-Madison's student union five years ago, Girl Talk now fills the Alliant Energy Center's 6,000-capacity Exhibition Hall. Bassnectar will likely do the same. He played the tiny King Club in 2007 and the Majestic Theatre in 2009.

Some fans who've experienced both rave scenes swear they're similar. Matt Fanale, a local music fan who DJs under the name Eurotic, says a new generation of concertgoers wants to dress in neon and dance till dawn. To him, this is evidence that music trends come in 20-year cycles, and that the motivation to party is the same as it ever was.

"At rock shows, you're singing and screaming along, but you're not necessarily dancing," he says. "With a DJ, you don't have to watch what's onstage. You can pay more attention to the other people who are there and feel a real connection to them for a few hours."

Fanale suspects that the sluggish economy has fueled attendance at live electronic shows. "With the world as depressing as it has been lately, people want to lose themselves with thousands of others. It's more fun to be happy than angry," he says.

The paradoxically isolating nature of social media also plays a role, according to DJ Nick Nice, who helped launch the Midwest rave scene in the early 1990s after spinning records at Queen, a Paris club where David Guetta curated the music. "Facebook is such a solitary experience. It's basic human nature to want to be social, and listening to music with thousands of other people reminds you that you're not alone, even when the world seems to be falling apart," he says.

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A new wave of rave: Electronic dance music gets the party started, 2012-style

30-03-2012 13:38 Subscribe! Follow Us On Twitter Become a Real Fan You can follow Joshua on Twitter @theJovenshire Sega is cutting some titles and restructuring their company a bit. They will also be concentrating more on the digital content as well.

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Sega is Cutting Games and Losing Money - Video