Electronic Mail

Judy Rose, a volunteer coordinator for Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign in Jones County, has resigned after forwarding a chain e-mail that suggests rival Barack Obama is a Muslim who wants to destroy the United States by being elected to its highest office. Obama, a Democratic senator from Illinois, is a member of the United Church of Christ and has never been a Muslim. The hoax e-mail has been widely circulated.

A former Broadcom Corp. executive has agreed to plead guilty to instructing a subordinate to delete a damaging e-mail, court documents disclosed Friday. Federal prosecutors had alleged that the note had provided evidence of stock manipulation by senior executives, including Broadcom founders Henry Samueli and Henry T. Nicholas III. Prosecutors filed an obstruction-of-justice charge against Nancy Tullos, a former human relations vice president at the Irvine chip maker.

A judge has ruled that Kentucky must turn over e-mails to a man who wants to see messages sent between his wife and a male co-worker at a state office. The man said his wife had acknowledged an affair but no longer had access to the e-mails and could not provide them herself.

Stephanie Fessler doesn't drive a hybrid car, compost her orange peels or bring her own reusable cloth bags to the supermarket. But two months ago, Fessler joined countless other businesspeople in doing one environmental good deed daily. At the bottom of every e-mail she sends, she includes this message: "Save Trees. Print only when necessary." "This is something I can contribute in my crazy busy life," said Fessler, 29, who works for a Los Angeles public relations firm.

Britney does it. So does my boss. What about you? It's texting while driving: the insanely attention-diverting practice of typing out messages on cellphones while barreling down the highway. A law against it in California is set to go into effect in July, but it applies only to drivers under the age of 18. Guess that leaves Britney Spears in the clear. An abstinence campaign probably wouldn't have much of an effect either, given how common texting has become as a form of communication.

A federal judge on Monday ordered the White House to preserve copies of all its e-mails, a move that Bush administration lawyers had argued strongly against. U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy directed the president's executive office to safeguard the material, in response to two lawsuits that seek to determine whether the White House has destroyed e-mails in violation of federal law. The White House says it has been taking steps to preserve copies of all e-mails and will continue to do so.

A blogger alerts fellow students to an imminent campus demonstration. A chat room user offers up a poignant Urdu-language poem. Another message has more practical advice: a homemade tear-gas remedy. In the days since President Pervez Musharraf's imposition of emergency rule, many Pakistanis have found a haven in cyberspace, where they can share information, keep up with the news and stay in touch with friends and associates amid a roundup of thousands of opposition activists.

Real estate agent Xu Jianzhong is wired -- but in a way that few in the e-mail addicted, BlackBerry-packing West would understand. The 20-year-old from China's rural Henan province doesn't own a computer. He visits the local Internet cafe to check his e-mail every couple of weeks. That's not to say Xu is out of touch.

Even as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice defended her department's oversight of private security contractors, new evidence surfaced Thursday that the U.S. sought to conceal details of Blackwater shootings of Iraqi civilians more than two years ago. In one instance, internal e-mails show that State Department officials tried to deflect a 2005 Los Angeles Times inquiry into an alleged killing of an Iraqi civilian by Blackwater guards.