MALAYSIA has about 500,000 active bloggers, ranking the country among the highest in the world after Indonesia and the European Union, Utusan Malaysia reported.

According to Universiti Malaya media department lecturer, Dr Abu Hassan Hasbullah, this showed the power of blogs in influencing the thinking of the people, especially about politics.

He said blogs currently had a wide reach considering how many Internet users visited these sites everyday.

"Our research shows that 70% of the election results were influenced by information in the blogs," he said.

Dr Abu Hassan said the ruling government could use blogs but pointed out that it would take a long time for it to be popular.

» Berita Harian reports that former Terengganu Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh would continue to be the state liaison committee chairman and state Barisan Nasional chairman.

State liaison committee secretary Datuk Rosol Wahid, said he was not informed about Idris wanting to step down and neither was he urged by any of the eight Umno division chiefs for Idris to step down.

"I also did not receive any orders from Idris to hold a state liaison committee meeting," he said.

Rosol said Idris' status would be decided by the Prime Minister and added that position in the party was not as important as serving the people.

» A large tree fell on a man, crushing him to death when he was tidying up the compound of his younger brother's house, Kosmo! reported.

The freak accident occurred in Kampung Banat, Arau in Perlis on Tuesday.

Razali Kamis, 47, was in the backyard when the tree crashed onto him from the back.

His brother, Abdullah, said there was no storm but that the wind was a little too strong and that the tree was old.