Turkey

Turkey 's only listed e-commerce platform Hepsiburada will prioritise profitability over rapid growth and step up efforts to retain customers who are being hit by soaring inflation. Inflation in Turkey hit a 24-year high of 85.5% in October, sharpening consumers' focus on costs with increasing numbers turning to loans or credit cards to pay for more expensive goods. Investor appetite for fast, and costly, growth has also waned as interest rates rise. "My mandate here is to improve profitability", new Hepsiburada CEO Nilhan Onal Gokcetekin told reporters late on Wednesday. Gokcetekin said the path to improved profitability began with retaining customers through a company loyalty programme. It also started offering quicker payment and new lending options late last year. "We are the only e-commerce company that has a country wide payment licence," Gokcetekin said, adding that it plans to sell payment services to merchants outside its marketplace. … [Read more...] about Turkey’s Hepsiburada to prioritise profitability, customer retention: CEO

Users of Proton VPN, one of the best VPN services around, now have more ways to fight back against online censorship – without the need to pay for it. The Swiss-based Proton VPN teamed up with German media outlet Deutsche Welle (opens in new tab) to offer people worldwide direct access to trustworthy and independent news content. Specifically, the Virtual Private Network provider has rolled out a series of dedicated servers optimized to provide high-speed access to DW websites and video content, whenever that's censored. Even better, these are available for both free and paid subscribers across all desktop and mobile apps. This partnership, a first of its kind, is just the latest effort in a long list of Proton VPN's continuous commitment to promoting a free and secure internet for all. We've partnered with @DeutscheWelle to defend independent media around the world.Now all #ProtonVPN users can bypass government censorship and connect to … [Read more...] about Proton VPN team up with Deutsche Welle to fight back against online censorship

Health officials in Europe are warning of an outbreak of botulism linked to botched weight loss procedures carried out in Turkey that aimed to paralyze stomach muscles to reduce appetite. So far, authorities have identified 67 cases—53 in Turkey, 12 in Germany, and one each in Austria and Switzerland. Botulism is a life-threatening neuroparalytic condition caused by the botulinum toxin, which is made by the bacterial species Clostridium botulinum . There a several forms of botulism , but in this outbreak, the cases are a form called iatrogenic botulism, which occurs when too much toxin is injected during medical procedures. Iatrogenic botulism is associated with generalized muscle weakness, drooping eyes, difficulty swallowing, and difficulty breathing. The cases in the outbreak have ranged from mild to severe, with a number of people ending up in intensive care, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) reported . The botulinum toxin is one of the most … [Read more...] about At least 67 people got botulism after trying to paralyze their stomachs

Archaeologists excavating an early Roman imperial tomb in Turkey have uncovered evidence of unusual funerary practices. Instead of the typical method of being cremated on a funeral pyre and the remains relocated to a final resting place, these burnt remains had been left in place and covered in brick tiles and a layer of lime. Finally, several dozen bent and twisted nails, some with the heads pinched off, had been scattered around the burn site. The archaeologists suggest that this is evidence of magical thinking, specifically an attempt to prevent the deceased from rising from the grave to haunt the living, according to a recent paper published in the journal Antiquity. Perhaps the best known examples of this kind of superstitious funerary practice are the so-called "vampire" burials that occasionally pop up at archaeological sites around the world. In the early 1990s, children playing in Connecticut stumbled upon the 19th-century remains of a middle-aged man identified only by … [Read more...] about Bent nails at Roman burial site form “magical barrier” to keep dead from rising