Daily News Feed 7.10.08

Skin-whitening adverts ignite race row in India
The actors are beautiful, the sets are stylish and the message could not be clearer – the woman with the paler skin gets the man. In recent weeks, Indians have been treated to an eye-catching television advert “mini-series” featuring three of Bollywood’s hottest talents in a moody love-triangle. All in the name of skin-whitening cream. The whitening market in India is worth millions of pounds, with men as well as women routinely buying bleaching lotions in an effort to “improve” their complexion. But the mini-series advert featuring Saif Ali Khan, Priyanka Chopra and Neha Dhupia has reopened a debate about India’s obsession with pale skin and triggered an angry reaction from some who think the advert is discriminatory and outdated. “It is strange. There is such a premium placed on pale skin,” said Urvashi Butalia, a historian and director of Kali for Women, India’s first feminist publishing house. “I am not sure where it comes from. It may have something to do with India’s history of being colonised by various people and that there is a hangover of the idea that Aryan people are superior and Dravidian people – those who were already here – are inferior.” (Continue Reading…)

Woods to Be First Billionaire Athlete
Tiger Woods is on course to become the first billionaire athlete with the popular U.S. golfer proving a marketing dream, according to Forbes Magazine. Woods, who won the U.S. Open last month despite a bad knee, is on track to exceed $1 billion in career earnings by 2010 after earning $115 million in 2007, said the American magazine which publishes an annual list of the world’s richest people. Forbes in Wednesday’s edition said it would take 32-year-old Woods a bit longer to actually pocket that amount as taxes and management fees eat into his prize and endorsement money. The calculation was based on Woods’ estimated earnings in the annual rich list dating back to 1996, when he turned pro, and also credited the world number one golfer with annualized investment returns of 8 percent. “Based on those criteria, we project Tiger Woods should join our list of the world’s billionaires in 2011,” said the magazine. “It will be an unprecedented occurrence.” (Continue Reading…)

Obama Changes Mind on Daughters’ TV Interview
Barack Obama has spent days rejecting charges of flip-flopping on Iraq, but the presidential contender on Wednesday owned up to changing positions on another issue — letting his daughters be interviewed on television. “We wouldn’t do it again, and we won’t be doing it again,” Obama told NBC’s “Today” show after “Access Hollywood” aired an interview with the Obama family, including their usually sheltered daughters, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7. The interview — with a syndicated celebrity news show — created a stir in news media circles, where journalists have long agreed to campaign ground rules that keep the Obama daughters off limits to press traveling with the Democratic candidate. (Continue Reading…)

NJ GOP: ‘Obama Loves America Like O.J. Loved Nicole’
A banner slogan on the Pemberton Republican Club’s Web site that said, “Obama loves America like O.J. loved Nicole,” disappeared yesterday after local Democrats alleged racist campaign tactics. The Web master, Ed Kuck, a recently elected Republican County committeeman, said he had seen the slogan on an Internet site and copied it onto the club’s Web page about a month ago as “a joke.” He removed it yesterday from the site, http://homewebs.net/pem, after a community person told him it would offend people, he said. “I found out it was inappropriate, and I took it down,” Kuck said, adding: “I just want to apologize to anybody who was offended, because that wasn’t our intention at all.” (Continue Reading..)