Consider a study that came out from Performics late last year, which found that men are more likely than women to engage in many types of social shopping activities.

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If this becomes a trend, it might signal that al-Nusra aspires to be more like Hezbollah or Hamas, organizations that defy neat categorization based on the range of social, political and military activities they engage in and the resultant legitimacy they have in the eyes of their constituencies.

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States not only employ some 4.7m people directly, but engage in a range of activities from waste-disposal to the provision of social services to business regulation covered by federal legislation.

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