Blog Posts by Lylah M. Alphonse, Senior Editor, Yahoo! Shine

The New York Subway station where Peter Mercurio and Danny Stewart found their son, Kevin. (Photo: Michael W./Foursquare)People often say that there's no such thing as coincidence, and there are plenty of romantic stories about those who feel they have found true love simply by being in the right place at the right time. But for one New York couple, fate took them a step further: They already had each other, and being in the right place at the right time -- a busy Manhattan subway station at rush hour -- they found their son.

A Young Mom Photographs Her Baby's Adoption Process

It was December 2000, and the baby boy was just three hours old when his mother wrapped him in a dark sweatshirt and left him on the ground, in a corner behind the turnstiles at the 14th Street subway station. As Danny Stewart, then 34, got off the C train, he headed toward an exit he didn't usually take. It was closest to the train car he was on, though, and as he made his way out of the station he saw a pair of tiny, pale legs sticking out from the dark fabric.

"I glanced down and saw what I thought was just a baby doll,"

Read More »from How One NY Couple Found Their Son in the Subway: A Family Made by Fate

That burger costs a lot more in other countries.People complain about the high price of their daily coffee fix, but after comparing the price tags on Starkbucks lattes in other countries, it seems like Americans are getting a pretty sweet deal.

Also on Shine: The Most-Expensive Starbucks Drink. Worth It?

According to this breakdown by the Wall Street Journal, the same grande latte that goes for about $4.30 in New York costs the equivalent of $9.83 in Oslo, Norway. A Starbucks craving while you're in Stockholm, Sweden, will run you about $7.40. But a 16-ounce cup of the stuff costs just $2.80 in New Delhi, India.

Also on Shine: The Word to Watch Out For on Fast-Food Menus? Fresh

Fast food outlets may seem to be on every corner in the U.S., and the prices all seem to be about the same. But the strength of a country's currency and the availability of a given ingredient can have a radical effect on those prices once you try to buy a familiar fast food product elsewhere.

In Venezuela, a McDonald's Big Mac costs a little more than $9

Read More »from Where fast food is the most expensive

Why are women getting fattter? One study says its because they do less housework now than they did in the 1960s. (Photo: Getty Images)A New York Times article about a study that links U.S. women's expanding waistlines to the fact that they do less housework has sparked a wave of outrage online, where readers decried the piece for being sexist.

Also on Shine: The Daily Shot on What Housework Has to Do with Divorce

"Attn ladies, maybe if you put a little more time into housework you wouldn't be so fat," tweeted Taylor Lorenz as she shared Gretchen Reynolds' article, entitled "What Housework Has to Do With Waistlines."

Also on Shine: 10 At-Home Chores that Burn the Most Calories

"Are you kidding? You just completely discredited yourselves as a newspaper," commented Agnes Shugardt on the New York Times Facebook page.

"WOMEN: You're fat because you don't do housework anymore. (Nice double whammy.) #whywasthisevenastudy," tweeted Sarah B.

The controversial study -- funded by a grant from Coca Cola -- was published this month in PLoS One and, as Gretchen Reynolds points out in The New York Times, it's actually a follow

Read More »from Does Less Housework Really Equal a Larger Waistline?

(Photo by George Marks/Retrofile/Getty Images)While many college students across the United States are looking at the calendar and getting ready for a booze-fueled spring break, some students are planning a different kind of vacation bash: their weddings.

Also on Shine: Is 21 Too Young To Get Married?

It's not uncommon for teens attending small religious schools to forgo the typical drinking-and-partying college experience and instead focus on finding their soul mates. At Walla Walla University in Washington state, the idea of "dating to marry" is so much the norm that students have dubbed the school "Western Wedding University."

Also on Shine: 7 Reasons to Marry Young

"A lot of people come here and they try to get married," Alyssa Seibold, a junior, told the Whitman Pioneer. "Because of the community that we are in, I feel like people can find someone they are compatible with because we all come from similar backgrounds."

It's a nickname that the school embraces, too, thanks to its devout Seventh Day Adventist roots.

"We hope

Read More »from 'Western Wedding University': Where Students Go to Marry. Are 'Mrs' Degrees Alive and Well?

A Finnish study found that having many boys shaves months off a mom's life. (Photo: Getty Images)Parents often quip that their kids—especially their rambunctious little boys—are "going to be the death of me," and new research shows that they may be right: Having sons can shave an average of eight and a half months off of a mom's life.

(The affect on dads? None, apparently.)

Also on Shine: A Dad's Time-Lapse Video of his Son, from Birth to Age 21

The study, by evolutionary ecologist Dr. Samuli Helle of the University of Turku in Finland and Dr. Virpi Lummaa of the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom, was published this week in the journal Biology Letters. He and his team looked at the post-childbirth survival rates of 11,166 mothers and 6,360 fathers in pre-industrial Finland, using records kept by the Lutheran Church there.

"Irrespective of access to resources, mothers, but not fathers, with many sons suffered from reduced post-reproductive survival," they wrote in the study.

The subjects were born in eight different parts of Finland during the 17th to 20th

Read More »from Study: Having Boys Can Take Months Off Your Life

25-year-old college student and photographer Callie Mitchell documented her decision to give her baby up for adoption in a photo essay for The Daily Iowan. (Photo: Callie Mitchell/The Daily Iowan)

Callie Mitchell was a 25-year-old photography student with plans "to wander the world to capture the minuscule moments of my surroundings" when something happened that changed her life forever.

She got pregnant.

Also on Shine: Wisconsin Bill Claims Single Moms Cause Child Abuse by Not Being Married

In an essay for college newspaper The Daily Iowan, where she works as a photographer, Mitchell described her experiences as "A spontaneous moment leading to an unplanned life change. Not a mistake. Definitely a surprise." Her photo-essay and videos have had a powerful impact around the world. (You can see her entire slideshow here.)

According to the essay, she found out she was pregnant on March 25, 2012. She and her boyfriend decided to have the child and begin a new chapter in their life together.

"I was excited at the thought of being a mom and loving my own child," she writes in the essay, which reads like a series of intimate journal entries. "I had the perfect boyfriend who I was

Read More »from Young Mom Photographs Her Baby's Adoption Process

Although women are shattering glass ceilings faster than ever before, they're still woefully underrepresented at the highest levels of the corporate world.

"Women are held back by many things. We're held back by bias, by lack of flexibility, by lack of opportunity," Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg says in the new trailer for her book, "Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead" (March 2013). "We also hold ourselves back. We don't sit at the table, we don't raise our hands, we don't let our voices be loud enough."

Also on Shine: The Most-Common Job for Women in 2013? Secretary (Just Like in the 1950s!)

It's time for women to take charge of themselves, so that they can take charge of their lives. In "Lean In", Sandberg issues a call to action for women, using anecdotes from her own life story and plenty of hard data and recent research to urge them to change the dialogue from what women can't do to what they can. In the book, Sandberg encourages women to "sit at the

Read More »from Sheryl Sandberg on Women, Work, and the Need to 'Lean In'

The food industry is awash in calorie-controlled packs of cookies, chips, and other snacks, but what does a 200-calorie portion of food really look like? The folks at WiseGeek.com decided to find out, measuring plates of veggies against slices of smoked turkey and bowls full of ketchup. News to us: a 10.25-inch wide plate full of broccoli -- about 1.3 pounds of the green stuff -- has the same number of calories as three hard-boiled eggs, eight Hershey's kisses, or 17 gummy bears. Take a look at how some other typical foods stack up. -- By Lylah M. Alphonse, Senior Editor, Yahoo! Shine

Read More »from 200 Calories? Here's What that Looks Like