Africa world

    A Somali model has become the first woman ever to grace the cover of Amercian beauty magazine Allure, while wearing a hijab. Halima Aden, who is only 19 years old, is pictured wearing Nike's high-performance hijab on the cover of the July issue of the women's magazine, with a caption that says This is American Beauty. Aden has long been working to busy stereotypes of Muslim women in the media, having appeared in the bikini round of the 2016 Miss Minnesota USA beauty pageant while wearing a burkini and hijab. Since then, she's also walked in the Yeezy season five show at New York Fashion Week and made headlines by being the first hijab-wearing woman to grace the cover of Vogue. Mario Sorrenti, who photographed Halima for Paris-based CR Fashion Book told Vogue: The power rea...

    The death toll in a church bombing in the Egyptian Nile Delta city of Tanta has climbed to 21, with 50 more injured, state television said on Sunday. There was no immediate claim of responsibility and the cause of the blast, just one week before Coptic Easter and the same month as Pope Francis is scheduled to visit Egypt, was not known. Islamic State’s branch in Egypt, which has waged a low-level conflict for years in the Sinai peninsula, has stepped up attacks on Christians in Egypt in recent months. A suicide bombing at Cairo’s largest Coptic cathedral killed at least 25 people and wounded 49 in December, many of them women and children, in one of the deadliest attacks on Egypt’s Christian minority in years. Islamic State later claimed responsibility for the attack. A sh...

    Turning the other cheek when jealous or estranged friends and family seek to cash in on their former friendship or family connection to you is an essential skill to learn when contemplating marrying into the British royal family, and it seems the Prince Harry’s girlfriend Meghan Markle is going to have plenty of opportunities to practice the art. Her older sister Samantha Grant, a former model and actress who suffers from multiple sclerosis, has revealed she is planning a tell-all memoir about growing up with Markle, who she has relentlessly criticized over recent months. Samantha insisted on Twitter this morning that her book would not be embarrassing or slamming. But one could understand if Meghan, 35, did not quite believe that assertion, as it is being reported that th...

    A federal judge in Washington state on Friday temporarily blocked enforcement of President Trump’s controversial ban on entry to the United States, and airlines planned to begin allowing passengers from banned countries to board, according to a person familiar with the matter. Following the ruling, government authorities immediately began communicating with airlines and taking steps that would allow travel by those previously barred from doing so, according to a U.S. official. At the same time, though, the White House said in a statement that the Justice Department would at the earliest possible time file for an emergency stay of the outrageous” ruling from the judge. Minutes later, it issued a similar statement omitting the word outrageous. The president’s order is intend...

    A Nigerian woman has racked up an NHS bill of more than £500,000 after giving birth to quadruplets in a west London hospital. The 43-year-old new mother, known as Priscilla, told staff she was unable to pay her bill after having the babies at Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital in White City. She claimed she planned to give birth in Chicago after being warned Nigerian hospitals did not have the facilities to cater for the children. However, the heavily pregnant woman was turned away by US border officials and went into labour three months early during her return to her home country in November. Priscilla, who underwent IVF treatment to help her conceive, is now living in a London hostel run by a charity while her two surviving babies, Elijah and Esther, remain in hospit...

    A file photo shows a woman wearing a niqab walks on the snow at the Oukaimeden ski resort, in the Atlas Mountains, 30 kilometres from the popular tourist resort of Marrakesh. Morocco has banned the production and sale of burqa full-face Muslim veils, apparently for security reasons, media reports said on Tuesday. While there was no official announcement by authorities in the North African nation, the reports said the interior ministry order would take effect this week. We have taken the step of completely banning the import, manufacture and marketing of this garment in all the cities and towns of the kingdom, the Le360 news site quoted a high-ranking interior ministry official as saying. It said the measure appeared to be motivated by security concerns, since bandits have ...

    The common swift stays constantly airborne for up to ten months at a time, new research reveals. The bird, ubiquitous in the UK and Europe, conserves energy by riding currents of hot air and taking power naps as it slowly glides from high altitudes. Scientists tracked 19 of the creatures as they completed two of their annual migratory cycles to Central Africa via West Africa and found three did not once touch the ground. It’s mind-boggling that they can stair airborne for 10 months without needing to come downProfessor Anders Hendenstrom The others spent all but half a percent of their cumulative flight time in the air, only landing due to emergencies such as violent weather. While there have been other examples of birds remaining in flight for periods of months, the evide...

    An annual gay pride march in Istanbul planned for later this month will not be allowed to take place, the Turkish city's authorities have said. A statement cited "safeguarding security and public order" as the reason for calling off the event. The order means anyone taking part risks facing intervention by the security forces. Organisers of the march have denounced the ban as a "flagrant violation of the constitution and the law". They said the city authorities were failing in their duty to protect the rights of citizens to exercise their rights, and that they would launch legal action. Security in the city is already tight after bombings in recent months blamed on Islamic State (IS) and Kurdish militants. Earlier this week, an ultra-nationalist youth group, the Alperen He...

    Muhammad Ali will be laid to rest Friday, the culmination of a two-day farewell for the beloved boxing legend and civil rights hero who electrified crowds the world over. Thousands from near and far are expected to line the streets of Ali's native city of Louisville in the southern US state of Kentucky to bid goodbye to the three-time heavyweight world champion who died last week at 74 after a decades-long battle with Parkinson's. Starting at 9 am (1300 GMT), the funeral procession will wind through the city of 600,000 where Ali was born at a time of racial segregation. It will pass sites that were important to "The Greatest": his childhood home, the Ali Center, the Center for African American Heritage -- which focuses on the lives of blacks in Kentucky -- and, of course, ...

Reginald Massey: 37 years ago on February 18, Muhammad Ali, the “greatest heavyweight boxer ever,” came to Bangladesh along with his wife for a five-day visit. During the visit, wherever Ali went, he was greeted wholeheartedly by tens of thousands of fans. Ali was also awarded honorary citizenship of Bangladesh while the boxing stadium in Paltan was named after him. Since my early youth I have been fascinated by Bengal, its culture and its people. I read all about Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Henry Derozio, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Tagore, Nazrul Islam, Jamini Roy and other amazingly creative people. No other region of South Asia had produced such a large number of artists and poets. In London, in the seventies, when I was chairman of Seven Stars Films I met a leading Bangladeshi businessman named ...