The Spider

This occasional feature, reported by bloggers around the globe, weaves together the hottest stories on the Web.

COLLEGE TRY: Like many young Indians, 25-year-old Ankur Shanker dreams of studying abroad. The London School of Economics accepted him this year, but he deferred entry for one reason: He can't afford the cost of graduate school. All told, the bill would come to more than $110,000. But Shanker is determined. On Dec. 1, he began a blog called " Wake Up and Smell the Million Dollar Story," where he plans to write one short story every day for six months. Using AdSense, a free program administered by Google, he displays advertisements on the Web site. The more readers he attracts, the more money he makes when they click on the ads. So far, he has earned just over $100.

-- Rashmi Bansal is the editor and publisher of the Indian youth magazine JAM. She lives in Mumbai and blogs at youthcurry.blogspot.com.

SLAP SICK : A British craze called "happy slapping" started as a bit of online slapstick, but it's not funny anymore. The fad apparently began in London several years ago, perhaps in a nod to Monty Python: Young people would smack or punch unsuspecting passersby, record the hits with their cellphones, and upload the videos to YouTube and Bebo. But the game has turned deadly. A 13-year-old boy was charged with murder last month after a happy-slapping death -- he allegedly burned a man with a flaming log while others recorded the attack.

-- Adrian Sudbury is a reporter who lives in Sheffield, England. He blogs at baldyblog.freshblogs.co.uk.

SORE LOSER: Former Mexico City mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador is surely Latin America's worst loser. After he narrowly lost the 2006 presidential election, Peje, as he is affectionately known, embarked on an endless campaign against the victor, Felipe Calderón. The blog " Peje's Path" chronicles that struggle in detail. Created as an exercise in cyber-hagiography, the Web site is now used by Peje's supporters as ground zero for their resistance against Calderón's allegedly illegitimate government. The blog includes a list of products true Pejistas should boycott -- Pepsi, Coca-Cola and Wal-Mart goods among them -- and unending posts on Calderón's evil deeds.

-- León Krauze is a journalist who lives in Mexico City. He blogs at letraslibres.com.