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Suryatapa

at the age of six

Three months ago, I wandered into a salon in Kolkata with my mother and came

face-to-

face with a prejudice

my beloved aunts, and maddening when strangers suggest my dark skin is something to be “fixed.”

No one in India seems to think it unusual to try to slap some bleach, or a herbal equivalent, on my skin to reveal a whiter me.

Darkie, Blackie and Kaalia

My color defined me and it stuck.

self-conscious.

Kaalia, remember me? When I pointed out that it was insulting, I was called out for being “too sensitive.”

“We called you that with love,”

Well-meaning aunts and their neighbors worried about my marriage prospects.

Like that should justify the hurt.

Perhaps, they suggested, a little less sun exposure, or maybe a few extra layers of sandalwood paste or a homemade concoction that the neighborhood swore by?

I wouldn’t let anyone touch my face.

The aunts sighed but never really gave up.

Instead, in this country, it is everyone’s business to correct it or cover it up.

The personal is open to public opinion, whether it makes you squirm or not.

Few Indians seem to be comfortable in their dark skin.

So it is no surprise that a multi-billion rupee market in fairness products thrives in India.

whitened versions of themselves, urging you to pick up a tube or two of the latest product.

From lotions and soaps to whitening underarm deodorant; every body part it seems is could be a few shades lighter.

Urban legends abound of how turmeric and milk, with their blood cleansing properties, had turned someone’s friend’s sister into a fair maiden – so I gulped down this vile concoction, gagged and never touched it ever again.

adolescent weakness,

I too was convinced to go on a regimen of drinking milk with crushed turmeric.

As an adult I’ve become much more comfortable with the color of my skin.

Over a decade of living in North America – where tans are pursued and Halle Berry is a beauty icon – helped that.

So when I moved back to India, I was surprised and offended all over again, as I confronted people who still think porcelain skin is the epitome of beauty.

society that embraced a wider spectrum of skin tone.

Victorian ideas of beauty,

“Do you do tanning?” I was dumbstruck and could barely stammer out a surprised “no.”

In retrospect, her assumption says a lot about how Indians equate skin tone with beauty, confidence and social standing.

Suryatapa Bhattacharya is the India correspondent for “The National” newspaper.

Given the timing with the launch of Google+ on June 28

strates how many American consumers use Google and the other major search engines. The top three internet destinations are all owned by companies with search engines, and by leveraging search-optimized news content, businesses will be able to extend their companies' reach and generate more exposure.#dd_ajax_float{background:none;float:left;margin-left:-120px;margin-right:10px;margin-top:10px;position:absolute;z-index:1}.fb_iframe_widget{margin-left:10px}.dd_button_v{padding:8px 0}Want to receive Brafton news automatically? Join our daily or weekly email list! Filed under News · Tagged with: Bing, Google, Yahoo Disqus Login About Disqus Glad you liked it. Would you like to share? Facebook Twitter Share No thanks Sharing this page … Thanks! Close Login Add New Comment Post as … Image Sort by popular now Sort by best rating Sort by newest first Sort by oldest first Showing 0 comments M Subscribe by email S RSS Reactions Google sites top Yahoo as No. 1 internet destination http://t.co/4iUX7kI 7 hours ago <d

ComScore's data illustrates how many American consumers use Google and the other major search engine

op three internet destinations are all owned by companies with search engines

dispute between Samsung and Apple.

Samsung has agreed to halt Galaxy Tab 10.1 sales in Australia until its patent dispute with Apple can be sorted out.

Apple has sued Samsung in the U.S., Europe and Australia,

accusing Samsung of ripping off its iPhone and iPad

BlackBerry 7

new OS

iPhone 5

Samsung's Galaxy II phone

Windows Phone 7 (Mango, or 7.5)

(with a keyboard

In-Depth With The Phones

single-core 1.2 GHz Qualcomm processor

5 megapixel cameras with image stabilization

24-bit

4x zoom

8 megapixel cameras; some have 3-D video capture and playback.

BlackBerry battery life standards

fairly heavy mobile phone user, consuming apps

5.5 hours of talk time on GSM

9810 rates 6.5

Torch 9800

768 MB

of RAM

Torch 9850 has 4 GB of storage on board, expandable to 36 GB, while the Torch 9810 has 8 GB on board, upgradeable to 32 GB. The Bold starts with 8 GB, and maxes out at 40 GB.

ice cream

red meat

butter.

lowering

artery-clogging cholesterol, what you eat may be more important than what you don't eat.

such as soy protein and nuts

reduce bad cholesterol far more effectively than a diet low in saturated fat.

That could drive down a person's risk of fatal heart attack or stroke by 10%, the authors suggested.

dump their drugs for tofu,

"Patients don't want to take the medications, and I'm afraid that if you tell them there's a diet that works just as well, then they'll do that instead," he said.

1 in 6 Americans has a high overall cholesterol level,

makes a person nearly twice as likely to suffer a heart attack or stroke as someone whose total cholesterol falls into a healthy range.

(LDL) cholesterol is one component of this overall number.

nation's most commonly prescribed medications,

355 million prescriptions dispensed,

soy protein, nuts,

"sticky" fiber such as that found in oats and barley,

plant sterols.

handful of nuts such as almonds or walnuts every day, and to substitute milk and meats with soy and tofu products as much as possible.

They can also see what other Facebook fans and friends have said while watching the movie.

The cult classic The Big Lebowski is now available to rent on Facebook.

reward up to five friends with a $1 discount on the Facebook rental

Even though the film is available on DVD, Blu-ray and through digital download services such as Amazon, Cinema Now and Vudu, we think a Facebook offering makes sense for this type of film.

this would be a great way for friends spread out across the country to share a funny, infinitely quotable movie together.

each of the gadgets cost HP at least £180 just to build, so selling the Touchpad for £89 would never have been considered until the firm decided to abandon it.

others hoping to loosen Apple’s stranglehold on the tablet computing market.

The main Google Android tablets, made by Samsung and Motorola, are pitched at around the same £400-ish price point as the iPad. But, put together with all the other Android tablets, it’s estimated they are outsold by Apple’s devices eight to one.

Amazon, which is rumoured to be preparing to release an Android tablet this autumn. Like Apple with the iPad, it has built and dominated a market for itself with the Kindle, its hugely successful e-reader.

Kindle’s success is its relatively low price of £111

Forty per cent of teens said they were exposed to such images, half of them before they were 13. This group were also more able to procure weed or prescription drugs and four times more likely to smoke up.

Parents were skeptical, according to the survey. Of a phone poll of 536 parents, a majority said they did not think social media made their child more likely to drink or use marijuana.

Pushing out patches to fix security holes or resolve bugs does not qualify as a new version of the browser

Firefox 4.1, and Firefox 6 is really just Firefox 4.2

Firefox launching a "new version" every six weeks is a nightmare.

but it still has 50 percent more market share than Firefox and Chrome combined

latest flagship browser from Microsoft--Internet Explorer 9-

It breaks add-ons--again

5 was launched, many users complained that it broke add-ons

It is filled with serious security vulnerabilities

no longer supported by Mozilla

Firefox isn't riddled with security holes

Is it fair to assume that underage drinking and substance abuse is Facebook's fault?

after seeing images of their peers doing just that

images alone are enough to convince some youth that substance abuse is a normal thing,

"Forty percent of the teens in CASA's survey said they have seen images of intoxicated kids, including some who are passed out, as well as pictures of peers using drugs," says WebMD.

The software is “currently not final” and is “still going through QA testing," Mozilla reportedly told The H earlier today.

the early arrival has caused a flurry of excitement among Firefox fans who couldn't wait another day for the software's official release

There are a bunch of other intriguing new features in the software as well,

, Firefox 7 will move into the Beta channel at the same time,

h Firefox and Thunderbird in the enterprise. There's also a mailing list and monthly phone calls you can attend on the first Thursday of every month.

Hewlett-Packard

HP’s bombshell revelations

where it holds the global No. 1 spot

TouchPad

Apple (AAPL) has positioned its iPad very well for years to come against challengers in the tablet market.

Apple’s iPad was announced in January 2010

no tablet has caught up to what Apple offers.

happy with a Google (GOOG) Android Honeycomb tablet; fewer have purchased a BlackBerry (RIMM) Playbook.

third-party app support,

table the TouchPad?

For most people, the iPad is the most complete tablet available.

Apple holds the tablet crown.

phone apps,

a media store,

tens of millions were already used to.

earliest

tablet contenders appeared and they’re just now gaining certain key features: movie stores, for example, and stretch and zoom capabilities for phone apps. Consumers want a complete tablet experience, not one that’s “coming soon.”

HP’s $1.2 billion investment in webOS persuaded me that it was in the tablet race for the long haul. I defended the company’s move to sell the TouchPad at a discount and even bought one, only to find out days later that I was wrong: HP wasn’t selling the tablet at low prices to expand the user base quickly and help attract developers. HP apparently gave the TouchPad only a brief chance to gain an audience.

swiftly pulled.

Samsung's

a date for the U.S. release

its hotly anticipated phone,

sold lavishly in foreign markets

r 5 million people worldwide

bought the flagship Android phone

85 days it has been on the market

one sold every 1.5 seconds,

Samsung

"a major product announcement"

an invitation to journalists early Friday

Galaxy S II

Aug. 29.

Galaxy S II by name,

The Galaxy is coming.

"It isn't rocket science to understand that it's the Galaxy S II announcement,"

It isn't an overstatement to say that the Samsung Galaxy S II is the strongest competition the iPhone faces.

sports&nbsp;a 4.3-inch, 800x480 screen, a 1.2-GHz processor, fast 4G network connectivity, and a sleek, simple design evocative of the iPhone. By contrast, the Apple iPhone 4 &nbsp;has a 3.5-inch, 960x640 screen, a 1-GHz processor, and a slower, 3G connection.

Bigger and faster?

Though it hasn’t gone on sale yet in the U.S.

Galaxy S II are copious

obscene.

24 days, the company sold 1 million units

The 2 million units sold in 42 days would fill two and a half soccer fields.

That's a lot of smartphones. But it's more than that: It's a lot of good smartphones,

"If the U.S. versions are anything like the international versions, these are going to be spectacular smartphones," he told FoxNews.com. Segan gave an international version of the phone an Editors' Choice award, calling it the finest Android smartphone available today.

Apple iPhone 5

he elephant in the room

he 3 million Galaxy S II phones sold in just over 50 days are as heavy as 100 elephants)

iPhone 5 is widely expected to be coming out in September, Segan noted.

And getting the right price could make all the difference for Samsung. "They don't want to be more expensive than the iPhone," Segan said.

But that 4G network connection may prove a major difference between the two.&nbsp;

Unless Apple has made some sort of secret breakthrough, [the faster LTE network] might make a Verizon iPhone too thick and power-hungry for Apple's demands this year. Apple may skip it for now and wait for smaller and cooler chipsets," Segan noted.

That faster connection really pays off for anyone surfing a lot of complicated websites or viewing movies over Netflix, he said.&nbsp;

But in the end, pricing, a final feature set and the design is all up to the carriers. "The mainstream price for a smartphone is $199 with contract," Segan noted. "We're all hoping for $199."