Girls now as bad as boys for underage drinking "According to the survey, one in six men (17%) are concerned that their drinking will lead to "man boobs", one in four (27%) are worried about developing a beer belly, more than one in eight (13%) fear their drinking is affecting their appearance and nearly one…

Halal: Buying Muslim "Time was, buying Muslim meant avoiding pork and alcohol and getting your meat from a halal butcher, who slaughtered in accordance with Islamic principles. But the halal food market has exploded in the past decade and is now worth an estimated $632 billion annually, according to the Halal Journal, a Kuala Lumpur-based…

Outsourcing Customer Service – Indian Call Centers "She admits that she always thought of the U.S. as a place with "a never-ending supply of money and material possessions," where crises are solved by Bree Van de Kamp turning up on the doorstep with freshly baked muffins. So did most of her colleagues." (tags: india callcentre…

Time to adopt a new creative uniform? "You only need to go online. Blogging creatives post constantly about how to dress, hiss snidely about the sartorial inelegance of their creative directors. Offline they’re even bitchier, each one exerting a normalising fashion peer-pressure equivalent to five 16-year-old girls. Is it any wonder that, almost to a…

Leading historians on whether fascism is on the march again "In Italy, the fascists, faced by an oppressive state, were seen as martyrs, and that won them popular support. In the UK, they were seen as thugs and marginalised. Mosley's New Party, which sought to work through the democratic system, attracted a large membership, but…

Mum gives daughter adult makeover for beauty pageant "More than a quarter of those questioned in a recent survey of 3,000 said they would rather spend money on their looks than education. " (tags: women beauty children life society absurd)