The app named Bars will allow users to post and share videos of them rapping over beats that are provided by the app itself. Bars has been developed by Facebook’s New Product Experimentation (NPE) R&D team.

The app is currently available for beta testers. The BARS app provides tools to rappers to create music and they do not require any special skills to record rap video.

Facebook in its blog said that BARS will make it easier for budding rappers to produce rap music without spending a lot of money on the equipment and production. It is a known fact that audio production tools are quite expensive and creating music can be quite tedious but BARS already has pre-loaded beats.

“With BARS, you can select one of our professionally-created beats, write lyrics and record yourself dropping bars. BARS auto-suggests rhymes as you’re writing to keep your flow going. You can also jump into Challenge mode and freestyle with auto-suggested word cues. Choose from a variety of audio and visual filters to take your creations to the next level.No formal rap experience required — you can create something great whether you’ve just thought of a dope couplet or have been freestyling for years,” Facebook said in the blog.

After creating Rap videos, you can also save the videos to your camera roll and share them on other social media platforms. For now, only a small number of iOS users can download the app in the United States. Interested users can also sign up for the waitlist in the app.

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He said in a post on Instagram that the “wanton destruction that took place will never be forgotten.”

In remembrance of the deadly attack, Ratan Tata shared a panting of the Taj Mahal Palace in Mumbai, that said, “We remember.”

Along with the painting, he wrote a caption in his post and paid tribute to the martyrs and the people who died during the attack.

“The wanton destruction that took place 12 years ago today will never be forgotten. But what is more memorable, is the way Mumbai as a diverse people came together, casting aside all differences, to vanquish the terrorism and destruction on that day. Today, we certainly can mourn the ones we lost and honour the sacrifice of the brave who helped conquer the enemy, but what we must applaud, is the unity and the acts of kindness and sensitivity which we should cherish, and which hopefully, will continue to shine in the years ahead,” Ratan Tata said in his post.

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Twelve years ago on this date, Mumbai witnessed a ghastly attack that lasted for four days. 166 people were killed and over 300 were injured as 10 terrorists attacked India’s commercial capital-hitting simultaneously at five major locations.

The locations-were two luxury hotels- Oberoi-Trident Hotel and Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel, a Jewish cultural center- Chabad House at Nariman Point, Leopold Café and Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus railway station, the main railway station where most of the killings happened and Cama Hospital.

Nine terrorists were killed during the terror attack. Mohammed Ajmal Kasab was captured alive and executed in November 2012.

The post Ratan Tata remembers 26/11 attack through heartfelt post appeared first on The Gulf Indians.

Sana, in a post on Instagram, recently announced that she would be quitting Bollywood and will “serve humanity” and follow the order of my Creator.”

There are currently 102 posts on her account, with the first post going back to 2016. Any picture that was related to world of entertainment has been removed. All that remains is of religious nature. Sana has 3.3 million followers on Instagram, and was last seen on screen in the Hotstar web series Special OPS. She is best known for having appeared in Bigg Boss 6 and Salman Khan’s Jai Ho.

Calling it her ‘happiest moment’, the actor wrote in her post that the entertainment industry has given her ‘fame’, ‘wealth’ and ‘honour’, but, she added, “for a few days now, I have been possessed of the realization that: Is the real purpose of man’s coming into this world only to chase wealth and fame?”

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She added, “Therefore, I declare today that from today onwards, I have resolved to say goodbye to my Showbiz lifestyle forever and serve humanity and follow the order of my Creator. All brothers and sisters are requested to pray for me to Allah to accept my repentance and grant me the true ability to live in accordance with my determination of spending my life following the commandments of my Creator and in the service of humanity, and grant me perseverance in it.”

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Sana Khan has featured in films such as Halla Bol, Jai Ho, Wajah Tum Ho and Toilet: Ek Prem Katha. She also participated in reality show Khatron Ki Khiladi. She has also worked in a couple of Tamil and Telugu movies like Silambattam, Thambikku Indha Ooru, Mr.Nookayya and Thalaivan.

Several other prominent celebrities have quit showbiz abruptly. ‘Dangal’ actress Zaira Wasim, late legendery actor Vinod Khanna, Big Boss fame Sofia Hayat, the original ‘Aashiqui’ girl Anu Aggarwal

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Its short-video app will be known as ‘Shorts’. In a blogpost You Tube said it is building You Tube Shorts, a new short-form video experience (15 seconds or less), for creators and artists who want to shoot short, catchy videos using their mobile phones.

“Over the next few days in India, we’re launching an early beta of Shorts with a handful of new creation tools to test out. This is an early version of the product, but we’re releasing it now to bring you our global community of users, creators and artists on our journey with us as we build and improve Shorts,” it said.

YouTube said it will continue to add more features and expand to more countries in the coming months as it gets user’s feedback.

Facebook’s Instagram too has launched Reels within its app to cash in on the absence of TikTok.

Meanwhile, a number of homegrown apps have been launched in the country including Ropso, Chingar, Josh and Moj.

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On August 19, a 19-year-old girl in Kerala committed suicide upset about the constant ridiculing over her dark skin. One can call her a victim of domestic racism or the so-called supremacy of white-skinned people over dark-skinned or dusky people in India. Complexion and body shaming are part of a teen’s growing up pains as are the pressure from schools to perform well academically and from parents not just to perform but often to out-perform their peers!

The social media – in the case of teens it is mainly Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok – adds to the insecurities in the coming-of-age years. The increased exposure to Indian and international media, their models and celebrities, have gotten into young girls in particular triggering eating disorders, inferiority complex and suicidal thoughts. When did high cheekbones, a more defined jaw line and visible collarbones become the Indian idea of beauty replacing plumper voluptuous figures?

The pressure to study, learning difficulties and verbal abuse are some of the factors that prompt youngsters to take the extreme step. A parent of a high-schooler told this columnist some time back how teachers in a reputed school in India asked the girls to get married if they scored low marks and not to waste time in school.
Anne Mathews, a lawyer who works as a school counsellor in Kochi, feels that it is not one factor that drives a child towards suicide but a combination of factors. The media and society may notice only one or two factors immediately preceding the incident but in fact there would be issues that had accumulated over the years and culminated in the fatal decision. Parental pressure is one aspect definitely, not just in academics but extracurricular activities too.

Also, Anne notes, with nuclear families and single children being the norm, youngsters are used to parents pampering every need of theirs. So when they hear a ‘no’ at some point, say in a love affair, they are unable to take it. Moreover, parents often brush off the problems of children as unimportant which make the latter turn to a peer for advice. The excess reporting in media inadvertently tends to glorify suicides. Domestic violence as well as substance and alcohol abuse are also contributory factors, Anne said.

A counsellor-cum-special educator at a school opines that upbringing and the strength to accept life as it comes play a big role in a student’s life. The upbringing is not conditioned by parents alone but the extended family, school and community. Lack of acceptance in these circles result in inability to face challenges and social pressures, which in turn makes a person act the way they do. Parents could help by adopting the right attitude and outlook themselves, which will help the kids to assume such attitudes and not be affected by certain social norms and perspectives, she pointed out.

While online games like Blue Whale have been known to lead its teen players to suicide, even books have been known to cause depression and worthlessness. A bestseller like an ‘An Unquiet Mind’ by Kay Jamison with passages like the following can trigger suicidal tendencies: “I think I hit the point of life where I’m just done. I cried, I fought, I tried, but everything is crashing down. My demons are screaming louder, trying to eat away the rest of me and this time we’re not going to fight back.”

Sheena, a school nurse, believes that it takes a certain courage to take such extreme steps, something a teen 10-20 years ago wouldn’t have dared despite verbal or corporal punishments at home or school. “Why can’t the same courage be used to take life head on?” she wonders.

Like everything else, for the new-gen teen courage is instant too. Sadly, it doesn’t always give them an opportunity to look back and “undo” the action.

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With Reels, Instagram users can share short videos with their followers on feed and, if they have a public account, make their reels available to the wider Instagram community through a new space in Explore.

Instagram is used by over a billion people globally across many surfaces — Feed, Stories, IGTV and Live.

With Reels, people can record and edit 15-second multi-clip videos with audio, effects and new creative tools on Reels.

The feature will start rolling out to users in India from 7.30 pm from Wednesday and at the onset, will be populated with content from a diverse set of public figures and creators, such as Ammy Virk, Gippy Grewal, Komal Pandey, Arjun Kanungo, Jahnavi Dasetty aka Mahathalli, Indrani Biswas aka Wondermunna, Kusha Kapila, Radhika Bangia, RJ Abhinav and Ankush Bhaguna.

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