There has been a barrage of emails being sent back and forth since late evening from all over India over the supposed banning of blogspot.com and other related blogging sites by Indian ISPs. Is the government beginning to play dirty and curb freedom of expression? Or is this something to do with the recent bombings in Mumbai? Stay tuned as the investigation continues..

List of ISPs that have blocked blospot.com

Update : Airtel customer service confirms site blockage saying that there has been a TRAI directive this morning to block online blogging forums.

Update : Indian Govt. has instructed ISPs to ‘control’ access to blogspot. It seems that some blogs are being used by some terror units (read SIMI) to communicate.There is a crack down in place. IP numbers are being physically located and identified. All should come back to normal once this operation is over. (via mutiny.in)

Update : Are ISPs blocking blogs? - rediff.com does some digging.

Update : Slashdot picks the story on the censorship and so does Boing Boing.

Update : Feed readers like Bloglines and Newshutch can still be used to extract feeds from the blocked sites. Another alternative is to use the pkblogs.com an alternate blog gateway for blogspot.com sites. (via India Uncut)

Update : Several leading dailies including The Economic Times, The Financial Express and The Indian Express have reported on the ban. (via Dina Mehta)

Zidane, why did you do this in your final international game?

Update : UK based Times and the Daily Mail hired expert lip readers to decipher what Matarazzi said to Zidane that irked him so much to do the headbutt and this is what they revealed.

Hold on, wait, that one’s not for a nigger like you.
We all know you are the son of a terrorist whore.
So just fuck off.

Update : Zidane apologizes for his head butt during the final, saying he was provoked by insults about his mother and sister.

There’s a wedding in the family and this is precisely the time of the year when all us cousins get together and have a blast. The past few days have been fun playing scrabble and drinking coffee while its pouring outside.

I know this aint gonna last long but for now we are all geared up to watch the clash between the Germans and the Italians.