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12 dead in cloudburst in Uttarakhand

Dehradun: Twelve people were killed and four others were injured as dozens of houses caved in following a cloudburst in Uttarakhand's Rudraprayag district today.

Several people are feared trapped under the debris and rescue operations have been launched, Disaster Management and Mitigation department officials said citing initial reports.

According to officials, incessant rains since yesterday followed by a cloudburst in the wee hours today have left a trail of destruction in Timada, Sansari, Giriya, Chunni and Mangali villages in the district.

The local administration has sought the assistance of the Army and the ITBP in view of the large-scale destruction caused by the cloudburst in Rudraprayag district.

Communication and power lines are disrupted and traffic along several roads including national highways in the area is affected, officials said.

Rishikesh-Badrinath and Rishikesh-Gangotri highways have been closed due to landslips triggered by incessant rains.

Allies want rollback, govt unlikely to oblige

New Delhi: Rollback. That remains the political buzzword on the morning after the government decided to hike the price of diesel by Rs 5 and to restrict access to subsidised cooking gas. But markets and the industry have instantly cheered a move aimed at boosting a failing economy and sources in the government say it is unlikely to go back on this decision.

Allies like a "shocked" Mamata Banerjee and the DMK have demanded that the hike be withdrawn, as has Mulayam Singh Yadav. And the main opposition party, the BJP, has threatened an agitation if it is not.

But the ruling Congress, say sources, has made its calculations. Faced with the threat of becoming the first in the BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa) group of emerging economies to be downgraded to junk, the economic imperatives of the government far outweigh political expediency. In biting the subsidy bullet yesterday, the Congress has factored in the political flak it will face as it heads into assembly elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh. The petroleum minister will be fronted to explain why this hike was the need of the hour.

The government received a big thumbs up from the Industry and the Markets. The Sensex was trading at a seven-month high on Friday morning on reform hopes. The decision on fuel was symbolically important as a signal that the government, seen for many months as afflicted by a policy paralysis, is now active on the reforms front. It is set to follow up yesterday's tough decision with a meeting today to discuss norms to allow foreign direct investment in the aviation sector. "The symbolism of the move is huge. One of the biggest criticisms against the current government has been its inability to take politically tough decisions that are economically sound," said Sajjid Chenoy, JP Morgan's India Economist.

Political parties across the spectrum will keep the pressure up. They are worried, they say, that the hike in diesel prices will hit the aam aadmi or  common man with increased prices all around at a time when he is battling high inflation.

But allies have reacted sharply and say, once again, that they were not consulted. The DMK's M Karunanidhi has suggested that UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi immediately convene a meeting of the alliance's coordination committee. The UPA coordination committee was set up recently to help keep allies in loop on critical policy decisions. Mr Karunanidhi said, "The hike would further affect the poor and the salaried class who are already reeling under high prices of essential commodities."

Google blocks access to inflammatory video

  San Francisco: As violence spread in the Arab world over a video on YouTube ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad, Google, the owner of YouTube, blocked access to it in two of the countries in turmoil, Egypt and Libya, but did not remove the video from its Web site.

  Google said it decided to block the video in response to violence that killed four American diplomatic personnel in Libya. The company said its decision was unusual, made because of the exceptional circumstances. Its policy is to remove content only if it is hate speech, violating its terms of service, or if it is responding to valid court orders or government requests. And it said it had determined that under its own guidelines, the video was not hate speech.

Millions of people across the Muslim world, though, viewed the video as one of the most inflammatory pieces of content to circulate on the Internet. From Afghanistan to Libya, the authorities have been scrambling to contain an outpouring of popular outrage over the video and calling on the United States to take measures against its producers.

Google's action raises fundamental questions about the control that Internet companies have over online expression. Should the companies themselves decide what standards govern what is seen on the Internet? How consistently should these policies be applied?

"Google is the world's gatekeeper for information so if Google wants to define the First Amendment to exclude this sort of material then there's not a lot the rest of the world can do about it," said Peter Spiro, a constitutional and international law professor at Temple University in Philadelphia. "It makes this episode an even more significant one if Google broadens the block."

He added, though, that "provisionally," he thought Google made the right call. "Anything that helps calm the situation, I think is for the better."

Under YouTube's terms of service, hate speech is speech against individuals, not against groups. Because the video mocks Islam but not Muslim people, it has been allowed to stay on the site in most of the world, the company said Thursday.

"This video - which is widely available on the Web - is clearly within our guidelines and so will stay on YouTube," it said. "However, given the very difficult situation in Libya and Egypt we have temporarily restricted access in both countries."