Yahoo’s homepage: A stark illustration of a company that can’t get its act together

Hear "Facebook," and most people will immediately think of social networking. Say "Google" and they'll think of search -- it's got its own verb, for goodness sake. If someone tells you they'll "Yahoo" that? Nothing comes to mind, does it?

That's a bad thing for the company, having announced Wednesday morning that it's considering spinning off its "core business" to make it more valuable in the eyes of investors -- and perhaps suitors as well. For consumers, that doesn't mean much right now. But such a move that would put even more pressure on the company and its products to stand out on their own.

Chief executive Marissa Mayer said Wednesday in a call with analysts that she thinks Yahoo's core business is on "a better path" than when she took over. In light of Wednesday's news, I decided to evaluate that statement by taking a reviewer's eye to the company's most visible product: Yahoo.com.

You could argue that, in terms of mindshare, Yahoo.com is dead and totally irrelevant. But the truth is that Yahoo is still one of the Web’s top properties, ranking third behind only Google and Facebook.

Not that that third-place finish has been that helpful for Yahoo. Looking at the main website, it's not hard to see why. It's fairly confusing, even outdated:

Mayer knew that when she took the company's top job in 2012 — she inherited a tangle of half-baked strategies from her predecessors and was charged with converting those half-steps into a turnaround.

There's no doubt that was a big challenge. But just looking at Yahoo's main website shows you that Mayer hasn't managed to pick a strategy either. Top billing goes to Yahoo's own daily news operation, but the bulk of the page is devoted to stories from other places. And there's also no sense of prioritization. The premium content Mayer ponied up big money for — Katie Couric's reports, David Pogue's reviews and stories from its admirable sports staff — are shuffled to the side, in a spot that would normally house an ad you were trying to ignore. That makes them seem less important than the stories Yahoo is picking up from other sites.

Saudi Arabia holds first ever election open to women

More than 900 women and nearly 6,000 men are competing for places on 284 local councils [Amer Hilabi/Getty

Saudi Arabia is holding its first ever election open to female voters and candidates, in a tentative step towards easing restrictions on women.

The conservative kingdom, where women are banned from driving and must cover themselves in public, is the world's last to give its women the right to vote.

Saturday's municipal polls are open from 8am until 5pm local time (05:00-14:00 GMT).

More than 900 women are running for seats.

They are up against nearly 6,000 men competing for places on 284 councils whose powers are restricted to local affairs including responsibility for streets, public gardens and rubbish collection.

A strict separation of the sexes in public facilities meant that female candidates could not directly meet the majority of voters - men - during their campaigns.

Women also said voter registration was hindered by bureaucratic obstacles, a lack of awareness of the process and its significance, and the fact that women could not drive themselves to sign up.

As a result, less than one in 10 voters are women and few, if any, female candidates are expected to win.

But one-third of council seats are appointed by the municipal affairs ministry, leaving women optimistic that they will at least be assigned some of them.

'Not running to win'

Electioneering has been low key, with rules preventing photographs of candidates applied to both men and women. But win or lose, the female contenders say they are already victorious.

"We have legal controls, which forbid the publication of women's photos - during elections and in all our work. And if women's photos are not allowed, it would only be right, fair and equal to ban photos of all candidates", Jadie al-Qahtani, the head of the election's executive committee, said.

"What's more important are the programmes of candidates from both sexes," he was quoted by the Okaz newspaper as saying.

Speaking to Al Jazeera hours before polls opened, several women said they felt excited and positive that women are participating, with the hope that society as a whole would benefit from more diversity in public affairs leadership.

"Women here are doctors and engineers - it's not like women aren't there," Lama al-Sulaiman, a candidate in Jeddah, told Al Jazeera.

"The international media sometimes has narrow views; they only report the bad stories. We have them, we have weaknesses and every citizen goes through challenges - those shouldn't be belittled.

"But to think that 50 percent of the population is going through those challenges is also ridiculous."

Mona Abu Suliman, a media personality and consultant in Riyadh, said that even if women don't win, just going through this process is important.

"Recognising women's votes in decision-making is a step towards equality," she said.

"There are people who see women voting and running in the election as another step towards Westernisation. They dislike seeing women in public-facing roles. But I don't think they are in the majority. The majority is either neutral or accepting."

Sinjar in the aftermath of ISIL

Sinjar, Iraq - After more than a year of being under the control of fighters with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Sinjar was recaptured this month by Kurdish fighters backed by US-led coalition air strikes.

Since ISIL arrived in Sinjar last year, the town has been decimated, with scores of Yazidi residents killed, enslaved or forced to flee. Many are eager to come back, but they remain wary of improvised explosive devices and other booby traps that ISIL might have laid.

Despite the danger, some residents have ventured back to collect their belongings or check on the status of their homes and businesses.

Mark Zuckerberg Is Spamming Your Facebook Feed With Baby Photos

Mark Zuckerberg isn’t your average new dad: for one, most guys don’t have $45 billion in stock to donate to inaugurate their newfound fatherhood. But in one regard, he’s just like everybody else: the Facebook founder and CEO is now filling up your newsfeed with baby pictures.

In a photo posted on Friday, Zuckerberg was seen smilingly changing daughter Max’s diaper. “One down,” he wrote, “thousands to go,” possibly referring to both the number of diapers and baby pics in his future and ours.

K-Pop group Oh My Girl detained at LA airport

The eight members were travelling to America for an album cover shoot but were detained for 15 hours in customs. 

A statement from the group's record company, WM Entertainment, said authorities held them after going through their costumes and props.

"They seem to have mistaken them as sex workers," said a spokesman.

Oh My Girl, who formed in March, are thought to be back in South Korean capital Seoul after being released by officials at Los Angeles International Airport.

WM Entertainment says it is taking legal advice in the US to find out whether the band's detention was legal.

The record company also said there might have been an issue with the type of visa the band members presented.

They had also been booked to perform at a gala event in Los Angeles on Saturday.

It's unclear if they will try to return to America to complete their album cover shoot.

Oh My Girl (or OMG) brought their debut single Cupid out in April with a second mini-album and title track Closer released in October.

The band members are all aged between 16 and 21.

South Korean pop music, known as K-pop, is dominated by girl and boy bands whose members are sometimes as young as 13 or 14 years old.

In 2012, the government clamped down on over-sexualised performances by threatening to give higher age ratings to films, music videos and TV shows which exaggerated the sexuality of younger singers and bands.

'I wear a hat instead of a hijab so people won't know I'm Muslim'

She has swapped her hijab for a beanie hat because she's worried about a possible backlash against French Muslims.

"I feel weak, to be honest.

"I shouldn't be doing that to protect myself, because one should not be scared of their religious belief. But sadly I'm wearing a hat," she says.

"I wouldn't be recognisable as a Muslim, so I wouldn't be targeted by ignorant people who just threaten all Muslims for what happened.

"I take the transport very late at night and you know something could happen." Even before the attacks on 13 November, Selsabil felt she couldn't display her faith freely without being judged and discriminated against. 

She has replaced her hijab with a hat in job interviews in the past.

Research suggests Muslims in France face discrimination when it comes to getting work.

"Sadly, there are some people who think we share the same opinions as the people who killed so many French people in Paris," says Selsabil. 

"We are stigmatised because we share the same religion as those fanatics. 

"We've been saying non-stop that we're not terrorists. 

"I shouldn't have to say that. That's a sentence that's been said over and over and people still don't understand."

Selsabil's parents come from Algeria. She lives in the suburbs of Paris and wants to work in the media industry.

She thinks her hijab means she will never make it on French television, so she's decided to move to the UK and is hoping to study journalism at Kent University.

"There's no possible future in the media industry in France for me, there's no place for me," she explains.

"I really want to do this, so I am saving up to attend university in England.

"I've worked for a year to be able to go there and they accepted me. Now I'm saving up to go there next year.

"I will miss Paris a lot. I love Paris. I'm always at the museums, theatres, even just walking around the streets of Paris. It's very special."

Selsabil is working as a waitress so she can save enough money to study in the UK. 

France has banned recording numbers around religion in their census but there is anecdotal evidence suggesting a growing number of young Muslims like Selsabil are choosing to leave France because of Islamophobia and discrimination. 

"I'm French but I'm also Muslim, so people will never see me as fully French," she says.

"My dream, it's a very optimistic dream, is that equality of chance would be a thing in France regardless of ethnicity and religious belief."

Refugee Named Her Baby after Angela Merkel

Hind Almahdawi was exhausted. She was about nine months pregnant and had just arrived in the city of Hanover, Germany, after an 18-day journey over land and sea with her husband and four year-old-son from their hometown of Baghdad, where they had to decided to flee after her husband Ali Adnan, a soldier in the Iraqi military, had received death threats from ISIS.

As the train from near the Austrian border pulled into Hanover on the morning of October 4, she could already feel the pains of childbirth. From there, it was a scramble to find a hospital. That afternoon, she gave birth to a baby girl. Her husband proposed the name Angela, after German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose generous policy toward refugees is what allowed the family to arrive and settle in the safety of Germany.

It was in part for her refugee policy that Angela Merkel was namedTIME’s Person of the Year this week. Although she is under political pressure to reduce the number of asylum seekers arriving in 

Alexander Koerner—Getty ImagesHind Almahdawi, from Bagdad, poses with her infant daughter, Angela in Sarstedt, Germany on Nov. 4, 2015.

Germany, she has restated her promise to welcome refugees with “open arms.” The birth of baby Angela in October was emblematic of how Merkel’s leadership has inspired the millions of people fleeing war and civil strife across the world.

“She helped many people,” Hind says of Merkel in a phone interview. “My husband suggested it and were both happy with the name.”

Almahdawi, 22, and her husband decided to leave Iraq after he received threats that he says came from ISIS. The message, which he says came in at least one phone call and a written message, was simple and chilling: leave the military and join the jihadists, or you and your son will be killed. “People say Baghdad is safe,” says Andan, who is 35. “But the problem is Baghdad is like a silent bomb.”

The family had other reasons to leave. Their four-year-old son, Mustafa, needed treatment for a heart condition. But it was the death threats that spurred their flight, like so many others in the Middle East, first to Turkey, then to Greece in an overcrowded smuggler’s boat, across the Balkans by bus, then a series of trains through Croatia, Hungary, Austria, and finally Germany. Andan said that at one point in Turkey, the whole family, including four year-old-old son Mustafa and the pregnant Almahdawi, hiked for hours across rugged terrain.

The family found a temporary home in a shelter for refugees in the German town of Sarstedt, outside of Hanover. It was there that photographer Alexander Koerner took a series of portraits of refugees. Koerner set up his equipment in the main hall of the camp, where the residents would come to eat their meals. He sat and talked to each person before taking their portrait, in order to develop a sense of their individual story. “It’s just focused on the person not on the environment itself,” he says of the images. “He can look however he looks.”

As they spoke on Friday the family was preparing to move out of the shelter into housing where they would have their own room, although the exact destination had yet to be determined. Almahdawi and Adnan said they were worried about the relatives they left behind in Iraq, including Almahdawi’s parents and three brothers, but they expressed confidence that their children had better chances for their future in Germany then they could have ever had in Iraq. “I’m happy to be safe with my family,” said Almahdawi. The family’s future is still uncertain, but thanks to Merkel and Germany, they no longer have to live in fear.