Mercyvill

The previously little-known magazine has begun outselling Vogue and Elle here, sparking a national debate over whether fashion and Islam can coexist The Turkish women's magazine Âlâ first gained notice in the summer of 2011 by putting the most controversial piece of fabric in Turkey, the Islamic headscarf, on its cover. Four months later, Turkish secularists and traditional Muslims alike are still debating: Can fashion and Islam comfortably coexist? The brainchild of advertising agency account executives Mehmet Volkan Atay and Burak Birer, Âlâ (Beautiful Lifestyle) targets Turkey's growing number of observant Muslim women with a monthly selection of clothing advice, interviews with Muslim designers and businesswomen, travel tips and feature stories. It claims that its circulation has quadrupled to 40,000 copies since the first edition hit newsstands last July, and is widely reported by T...

In the 1980s, Larry Youngblood was wrongfully imprisoned for raping a 10-year-old boy. The way the Supreme Court handled his case had lasting consequences. In the early morning hours of June 16, 2004, a 31-year-old man named David Leon was killed by a train just west of Estavan Park in Tucson. The Arizona Daily Star ran a brief item on the accident but never mentioned Leon’s background; the press seemed unaware that he had been in the middle of Tucson’s biggest legal scandal for the past two decades. There was a good reason the media hadn’t recognized Leon’s name: Over the years, he’d been referred to vaguely as “the victim” or under the pseudonym “Paul”; the U.S. Supreme Court had called him “David L.” But concealing his identity hadn’t prevented the young man from suffering untold damage. Weeks after the train accident, the autopsy revealed that he had been drunk at the time of his death, a fact that surely surprised no one who knew him. And so the story ended a...

A new Census tool reveals which large cities are the nation's leaders in earnings, unemployment, and unmarried young people. Snowfalls and singles: That's what Buffalo does. (Mark Blinch/Reuters) Springfield, Massachusetts, is the most single. San Jose, California, is the most international (richest, too). Provo, Utah, is the youngest workforce in America, and McAllen, Texas, has the most minorities (and the poorest workers). Those are some of the tidbits you can scoop up from the new edition of the Census Explorer for young adults. Overall, the report paints a darkening picture for Millennials. It finds, for example, that median earnings for full-time workers between 18 and 34 have fallen by 10 percent since 2000 and the share of unmarried adults in this cohort has grown from 41 percent in 198...

Sap drains into a cup on the Firestone rubber tree plantation on Aug. 24, 2014, in Dolo Town, Liberia. (John Moore/Getty Images) HARBEL, Liberia—The killers launched from the plantation under a waning moon one night in October 1992. They surged past tin-roofed villages and jungle hideouts, down macadam roads and red-clay bush trails. More and more joined their ranks until thousands of men in long, ragged columns moved toward the distant capital. Men in camouflage mounted rusted artillery cannon in battered pickup trucks. Thin teenagers lugged rocket-propelled grenade launchers. Children carried AK-47s. Some held long machetes.

(Shutterstock*) Cancer Council Australia and the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia yesterday released new draft guidelines to help GPs counsel men who ask about prostate cancer tests. They advise GPs to explain the pros and cons of testing and, if the man wants to proceed, to give him a prostate specific antigen (PSA) blood test every two years between the ages of 50 to 69. Over the past few decades public health messages have drummed into us that early detection and treatment of diseases are key to good outcomes. Add to this the celebrity testimonials for prostate tests and non-celebrities who tell us their PSA test “saved their life” and it’s easy to see why men think the tests are beneficial.

The Chinese dissident Tang Baiqiao, who is chairman of China Peace and Democracy Federation, said recently that nowadays many Chinese people have a very good understanding of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), thanks in part to the “ Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party .” “A friend of mine once told me this story. This friend is a Christian and a human rights activist,” Tang said. “After the publication of the ‘Nine Commentaries,’ my friend began distributing it to people. This friend of mine then met a well-known gang leader who had become a Christian because of my friend. This gang leader was later arrested, and he spoke of how his faith in Christianity had helped in during his time in prison.

NEW YORK—Leading hundreds of angry teens in protest of the deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of white police officers on Monday was a small collective of highly motivated high school students. Shana Buckstad, 17, was part of the group. She alone convinced 167 students and four teachers in her school to walk out. The feat earned her a warning Monday from the principal of her school on Governors Island, for possible suspension. “You’re the one enforcing it in the school and putting our students in danger,” Shana said she was told. When she got the news, she panicked.

You are what you eat - but also how you eat and who you eat with. Food can affect your mood, your bowels and your world-view, write Victoria Clark and Melissa Scott, authors of Dictators' Dinners: A Bad Taste Guide to Entertaining Tyrants. In this age of the foodie, the gourmand and the gourmet, we have taken a fresh look at some of the worst dictators of the 20th Century by subjecting them to culinary scrutiny. Without seeking to mitigate their crimes by humanising them we wanted to cut them down to human size. The line between man and monster can be very thin.

The US space agency's new Orion crew capsule has completed its maiden, unmanned voyage with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off Mexico. Drone video sighted the ship descending gently on its parachutes, shortly before it hit the water. US Navy support vessels are on station to capture the floating capsule with the help of divers. Orion is designed eventually to take humans beyond the space station, to destinations such as the Moon and Mars.

Being severely obese can knock up to eight years off your life and cause decades of ill health, a report says. The analysis showed being obese at a young age was more damaging to health and life expectancy. The team, at McGill University in Canada, said heart problems and type 2 diabetes were major sources of disability and death. Experts said people were frequently "ignorant" of the consequences of obesity.

A hospital in Guatemala has been described by campaigners as the world's most abusive and dangerous mental health institution. Former patients say they were raped while sedated, and the director himself admits - while being filmed undercover by the BBC - that patients are still being sexually abused. Wherever I look I see motionless bodies lying on the crumbling concrete floor of a barren courtyard in the burning sun. The patients appear to have been heavily sedated. Their heads have been shaved and most are dressed in rags with nothing on their feet. Others are totally naked, exposing their dirty skin covered in their own faeces and urine. They look more like concentration camp prisoners than patients.

CT scans can predict the risk of further strokes in mild stroke patients, the research suggests All patients should be given a brain scan after a stroke, even if it is a mini-stroke, say Canadian researchers writing in the journal Stroke. This is because images of the brain can help doctors assess the damage done and predict the risk of another stroke occurring. In the UK, guidelines recommend urgent treatment of high-risk stroke patients. But the Stroke Association says thousands of lives could be saved by treating mini-strokes within 24 hours.

(Olivia Howitt) A global project invites members of the public to pose nude for artists. After 20 years of life drawing, Tanis Taylor decided to take part – on the other side of the easel. You can tell a lot about a person from the way they undress. Life models often have a silk robe that sort of sighs to the ground before they take their pose. Some walk out of the toilets stark naked making small talk with the class. Others never make eye contact. I remember one sitter who took her clothes off item by item and sat glowering at us from her bar stool for a full hour. I’m wondering, when my time comes, what I will do. How I will expose my average, totally naked, 40-year-old body to a roomful of strangers. How would you?

(Jewel Samad/Getty Images) Not sure whether to include any volunteer stints you’ve had as part of your application? Worried that they might not be taken seriously enough? You might want to think again. In a 2013 survey  by global consulting firm Deloitte, more than four out of five US human resources managers said that skills and experience gained while volunteering are taken into consideration when deciding whether to hire a candidate. And in a reed.co.uk survey commissioned by London-based volunteer facilitator TimeBank , 80% of UK employers said that they value volunteering on a CV.

Failure to tackle land degradation will exacerbate Africa's food security worries, the report warns Neglecting the health of Africa's soil will lock the continent into a cycle of food insecurity for generations to come, a report has warned. The publication by the Montpellier Panel said the problem needed to be given a higher priority by aid donors. It added that soil degradation was also hampering economic development, costing the continent's farmers billions of dollars in lost income.

For weight loss, breakfast may not matter so much. Illustration: Sarah Wilkins Oftentimes we hear that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, as it's assumed to jump-start metabolism and regulate the appetite. But recent studies point to the possibility that these thoughts have been overblown. What if breakfast is really just another meal? What if we—gasp!—skipped it every now and then?

Formula One driver Derek Bell was committed to the moment at hand. (Colorsport/Corbis) t When Formula One driver Derek Bell stepped into a race car and switched on the ignition, life's distractions melted away. Bell, who raced from 1968 to 1996 for teams including Ferrari and McLaren, would think of nothing for the next few hours but tire pressure, how much gas he had left, and how the car felt going into a turn. Nothing but the track.

t Here’s a radical proposal: Start your new meditation habit at work. (Thinkstock) Have you read the latest study about meditation? Probably not, because even as you read this sentence another has likely come out. There is a steady stream of new research and news stories about the benefits of meditation and other mindful breathing practices. As they report, meditation boosts energy, helps with focus, reduces stress and anxiety, increases resilience and possibly, subtly, changes your life and your brain for the better.

Most couples who marry force a gruesome statistic to the back of their heads: There’s a 50% chance this won’t work out. Turns out that isn’t so. The  New York Times  compared divorce rates over time for couples married in the US every decade since the 1960s and found that divorce rates peaked in the 1970s and 80s, but have come down since then, thanks largely to the ways women have redefined marriage and their role in it—making the decision to marry at an older age, use birth control, and marry for love.

Stephen Hawking: "Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete and would be superseded" Prof Stephen Hawking, one of Britain's pre-eminent scientists, has said that efforts to create thinking machines pose a threat to our very existence. Continue reading the main stor He told the BBC:"The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race."

(Shutterstock*) Though it is not in the headlines much these days, the Ebola outbreak in West Africa is worsening, with the number of infected people and the number of people killed by the disease being dramatically underreported. In fact, as noted by Britain’s  The Guardian  newspaper, the number of people in West Africa who have contracted the disease has risen well above 16,000, and the death toll nearly 7,000, according to the World Heath Organization, which warned that those figures are most probably low.

Mercy Kitomari came up with her dream business whilst working in London As part of the latest series of African Dream, businesswoman Mercy Kitomari - the brains behind Tanzanian organic ice cream company Nelwa's Gelato - shares her top 10 social media marketing tips for aspiring entrepreneurs: Start with a goal.  Why are you active on social media? There are only three acceptable answers: a) increase brand awareness by growing your reach, b) build customer loyalty by providing more support, or c) increase sales by getting more people to purchase, more frequently. Don't even start unless you can answer this question.